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 Fear of Flying (1973)

  A sort of Jewish princess from Dublin. “And your wife—what was she like?” (We were so hopelessly lost by now that we pulled over and stopped the car.) “Catholic,” he said, “a Papist from Liverpool.” “What did she do?” “Midwife.” This was a strange bit of information. I didn’t know quite how to react to it. “He’d been married to a Catholic midwife from Liverpool,” I imagined myself writing. (In the novel, I’d change Adrian’s name to something more exotic and make him much taller.) “Why did you marry her?” “Because she made me feel guilty.” “Great reason.” “Well it is. I was a guilty son of a bitch in medical school. A real sucker for the Protestant ethic. I mean, I remember there were certain girls who made me feel good—but feeling good scared me. There was one girl—she used to hire this huge barn and invite everyone to come fuck everyone. She made me feel good—so, of course, I mistrusted her. And my wife made me feel guilty—so, of course, I married her. I was like you. I didn’t trust pleasure or my own impulses. It frightened the hell out of me to be happy. And when I got scared—I got married. Just like you, love.” “What makes you think I got married out of fear?” I was indignant because he was right. “Oh, probably you found yourself fucking too many guys, not knowing how to say no, and even liking it some of the time, and then you felt guilty for having fun. We’re programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You’re supposed to work and suffer—and the trouble is: you believe it. Well, it’s bullshit. It took me thirty-six years to realize what a load of bullshit it is and if there’s one thing I want to do for you it’s teach you the same.” “You have all kinds of plans for me, don’t you? You want to teach me about freedom, about pleasure, you want to write books with me, convert me.... Why do men always want to convert me? I must look like a convert.” “You look like you want to be saved, ducks. You ask for it. You turn those big myopic eyes up at me as if I were Big Daddy Psychoanalyst. You go through life looking for a teacher and then when you find him, you become so dependent on him that you grow to hate him. Or else you wait for him to show his weakness and then you despise him for being human. You sit there the whole time keeping tabs, making mental notes, imagining people as books or case histories—I know that game. You tell yourself you’re collecting material. You tell yourself you’re studying human nature. Art above life at all times. Another version of the puritanical bullshit. Only you have a new twist to it. You think you’re a hedonist because you take off and run around with me.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘No . . . no, no, no, no, no , I mean, he won’t want to . . . no . . . no, no – I just . . . whole thing’s a bloody mess, of course, it’s just  kipps and belsey a matter of – ’ began Howard, but then could not think what indeed it was a matter of. A cough came down the line. ‘Look, I don’t understand – do you want me to get Jerome?’ ‘I’m right near you, actually – ’ Howard blurted. ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Yes . . . I’m calling from a phone-box . . . I don’t really know this bit of town and . . . no map, you see. You couldn’t . . . pick me up maybe? I’m rather – I’ll only get lost if I try to get to you – no sense of direction at all . . . I’m just at the station.’ ‘Right. It’s really an easy walk, I could give you directions.’ ‘If you could just pop up here, it would be very helpful – it’s getting dark already and I know I’ll take a wrong turn, and . . .’ Howard cringed into the silence. ‘I’d just like to ask you a few things, you see – before I see Jerome.’ ‘All right,’ said the voice at last, tetchy now. ‘Well – let me get my coat, yeah? Outside the station, right? Queen’s Park.’ ‘Queens . . . ? No, I, er . . . Oh, Christ , I’m at Kilburn – is that wrong? I thought you were in Kilburn.’ ‘Not really. We’re between the two, closer to Queen’s Park. Look, just . . . I’ll come and get you, don’t worry. Kilburn Jubilee line, right?’ ‘Yes, that’s right – that’s very kind of you, thank you. Is it Michael?’ ‘Yes. Mike. You’re . . . ?’ ‘Belsey, Howard Belsey. Jerome’s – ’ ‘Yeah. Well, stay there, then, Professor. I’ll be seven minutes, maybe.’ A rough white boy lurked outside the phone-box, with a doughy face and three well-spaced spots, one on his nose, one on his cheek and one on his chin. As Howard opened the door, doing the apologetic smile thing, the boy did the uninterested in outmoded social convention thing, saying ‘About fucking time ’, and then made it as difficult as possible for Howard to get out and for the boy to get in. Howard’s face glowed. Why this flush of shame, when it is  On Beauty

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  You see —oh well, let’s have it out. Dolly has written a most obscene four-letter word which our Dr. Cutler tells me is low-Mexican for urinal with her lipstick on some health pamphlets which Miss Redcock, who is getting married in June, distributed among the girls, and we thought she should stay after hours—another half hour at least. But if you like—” “No,” I said, “I don’t want to interfere with rules. I shall talk to her later. I shall thrash it out.” “Do,” said the woman rising from her chair arm. “And perhaps we can get together again soon, and if things do not improve we might have Dr. Cutler analyze her.” Should I marry Pratt and strangle her? “... And perhaps your family doctor might like to examine her physically—just a routine check-up. She is in Mushroom—the last classroom along that passage.” Beardsley School, it may be explained, copied a famous girls’ school in England by having “traditional” nicknames for its various classrooms: Mushroom, Room-In 8, B-room, Room-BA and so on. Mushroom was smelly, with a sepia print of Reynolds’ “Age of Innocence” above the chalkboard, and several rows of clumsy-looking pupil desks. At one of these, my Lolita was reading the chapter on “Dialogue” in Baker’s Dramatic Technique, and all was very quiet, and there was another girl with a very naked, porcelain-white neck and wonderful platinum hair, who sat in front reading too, absolutely lost to the world and interminably winding a soft curl around one finger, and I sat beside Dolly just behind that neck and that hair, and unbuttoned my overcoat and for sixty-five cents plus the permission to participate in the school play, had Dolly put her inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand under the desk. Oh, stupid and reckless of me, no doubt, but after the torture I had been subjected to, I simply had to take advantage of a combination that I knew would never occur again. 12 Around Christmas she caught a bad chill and was examined by a friend of Miss Lester, a Dr. Ilse Tristramson (hi, Ilse, you were a dear, uninquisitive soul, and you touched my dove very gently). She diagnosed bronchitis, patted Lo on the back (all its bloom erect because of the fever) and put her to bed for a week or longer. At first she “ran a temperature” in American parlance, and I could not resist the exquisite caloricity of unexpected delights—Venus febriculosa—though it was a very languid Lolita that moaned and coughed and shivered in my embrace. And as soon as she was well again, I threw a Party with Boys. Perhaps I had drunk a little too much in preparation for the ordeal. Perhaps I made a fool of myself. The girls had decorated and plugged in a small fir tree—German custom, except that colored bulbs had superseded wax candles. Records were chosen and fed into my landlord’s phonograph. Chic Dolly wore a nice gray dress with fitted bodice and flared skirt.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. v. 3). Towards the end of Dante’s sojourn on each terrace, he hears one of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. In each case, except the present, the angel of the respective circle is specially named as uttering the words. It has therefore been suggested that the angel is speaking here, too. But the word voices constitutes a considerable difficulty, nor is this difficulty removed by a reference to the words in second stanza of Canto xxii (Dante uses voci in both cases).C A N T O X I I IThe Poets mount to the second terrace; of dark rock, tenantless so far as the eye can stretch, and without mark or indication of any kind. Virgil apostrophizes the sun, and in lack of any counter reason, determines to follow him from east to west. After a time voices ring through the air in praise of generosity, the virtue counter to envy; and Virgil anticipates the direct warning against that vice ere they leave this the circle of its purification. Meanwhile they encounter the once envious spirits, appealing with full confidence to the ungrudging love of Mary, of the angels, and of the saints. The envious eyes that once found food for bitterness in all sights of beauty and joy, must now in penance refrain from drinking in the gladness of sea and sky and human love, for their lids are drawn together with such a suture of wire as is used to tame the wildness of the untrained hawk; and their inward darkness is matched by their sober raiment. They lean one against another in mutual love and for mutual support, and upturn their sightless countenances like the blind beggars that gather round church portals. Dante is shamed, as though he were taking ungenerous advantage of those whom he sees, but who cannot know his presence; and, having gained Virgil’s leave, addresses the souls in words of soothing beauty and aspiration. In answer to his question whether any of them are of Latium, Sapia the Sienese tells that they are all citizens of one true city; but that she, amongst others, had lived in her earthly pilgrimage in Latium. She tells the story of her evil joy at the defeat of the Sienese by the Florentines at Colle in Valdelsa, and utters her thanks to the humble saint whose prayers have secured her admission to expiatory suffering earlier than the else appointed time. In her turn Sapia questions Dante as to his journey,—with open eyes as she judges, and with breath-formed speech,—around this circle; and he answers that he too shall one day have his eyes closed there, but not for long, since he has sinned far less through envy than through pride.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  And it’s ten thirty for you – no later. School night. Where’s Zora? She better sign this too. Levi, have you put money in that phone yet?’ ‘How can I put money in it if people keep on stealing my greens from the counter? Tell me that!’ ‘Just leave a number where I can find you, OK?’ ‘I’m going out with my friend . He ain’t got no phone.’ ‘Levi, what kind of friend doesn’t have a phone? Who are these people?’ ‘Mom, be honest,’ said Zora, walking backwards into the room in electric blue satin with her hands above her head. ‘What’s the ass situation in this dress?’ Fifteen minutes later, possible rides and buses and taxis were being discussed. Howard quietly slipped off his stool and put his overcoat on. This surprised his family. ‘Where’re you going?’ asked Levi. ‘College thing,’ said Howard. ‘Dinner in one of the club halls.’ ‘One of the dinners?’ said Zora quizzically. ‘You never said. I thought you weren’t going this year. Which hall?’ She was pulling a long pair of debutante’s elbow-length gloves on to her hands. The girl who had answered the door to Kiki came into the room. ‘Clotilde, may we have some tea brought in please, and Mrs Belsey has a pie you can cut up. None for me, please – ’ Kiki protested, but Carlene shook her head. ‘No, I can’t digest a thing before three in the afternoon these days. I’ll try a piece later, but you go on ahead. Now. It’s so good to see you again. How are you?’ ‘Me? Fine . I’m fine. And you?’ ‘As it happens I’ve been in bed for quite a few days. I watched the television. A long documentary – a series of programmes – about Lincoln. Conspiracy theories regarding his death and so on.’ ‘Oh, I’m so sorry you’re feeling bad,’ said Kiki, looking away with shame at the thought of her own conspiracy theories. ‘Don’t be. It was a very good documentary. I find it’s not true what they say about American television – not all of it, anyway.’ ‘Why, what do they say about it?’ asked Kiki, smiling rigidly. She knew what was coming and she was annoyed by it, but also annoyed at herself for being annoyed. Carlene shrugged in a fragile way, not quite in control of the movement. ‘Well, in England we tend to think of it as awful nonsense, I suppose.’ ‘Right. We hear that a lot. I guess our TV’s not so great.’ ‘Actually I think it’s much of a muchness.

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

  In effect, a jury is a dozen subjective perceptions that are supposed to yield one fair and objective truth. The idea that jurors can somehow detect remorse in a defendant, from his facial configurations or bodily movements or words, is steeped in the classical view, which assumes that emotions are universally expressed and recognized. The legal system assumes that remorse, like anger and other emotions, has a single, universal essence with a detectable fingerprint. However, remorse is an emotion category composed of many diverse instances, each one made for a specific situation. A defendant’s construction of remorse depends on his concept for “Remorse,” culled from his prior experiences within his culture, which exists as cascades of predictions that guide his expression and his experience. On the other side of the courtroom, a juror’s perception of remorse is a mental inference—a guess based on cascades of predictions in her brain that make sense of the defendant’s facial movements, body posture, and voice. For that juror’s perceptions to be “accurate,” she and the defendant must categorize with similar concepts. This kind of synchrony, with one person feeling remorse and the other perceiving it, even without words ever being spoken, is more likely to occur when two people have similar backgrounds, age, sex, or ethnicity. 34 In the Boston Marathon Bombing case, if Tsarnaev felt remorse for his deeds, what would it have looked like? Would he have openly cried? Begged his victims for forgiveness? Expounded on the error of his ways? Perhaps, if he were following American stereotypes for expressing remorse, or if this were a trial in a Hollywood movie. But Tsarnaev is a young man of Muslim faith from Chechnya. He lived in the United States and had close American friends, but Tsarnaev had also (by his defense team’s account) spent a lot of time with his older, Chechen brother. Chechen culture expects men to be stoic in the face of adversity. If they lose a battle, they should bravely accept defeat, a mindset known as the “Chechen wolf.” So if Tsarnaev felt remorse, he might well have remained stony-faced. 35 Tsarnaev did reportedly become tearful for a moment when his aunt took the stand to plead for his life. Chechnya has a culture of honor, where it is painful to shame your family. If Tsarnaev saw a loved one publicly shamed, say, an aunt begging on his behalf, a few tears would be consistent with Chechen cultural norms for honor. 36 We—and jurors—can only guess when constructing a perception to explain Tsarnaev’s impassive stance. Using our Western cultural concepts of remorse, we perceived him as coolly indifferent or full of bravado, rather than stoic. So it’s possible that our guesswork, in this case, produced a cultural misunderstanding in the courtroom, ultimately leading to his death sentence.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  1. This obscene and insulting gesture, the origin of which has been variously explained, was made by inserting the thumb between the index and middle finger.2. Pistoia was said to have been founded by the remnants of Catiline’s army.3. Referring to Capaneus, for whom see Canto xiv.4. Cacus was a monster inhabiting a cave in Mount Aventine and noted for his thefts. He dragged into his cave, by their tails, some of the oxen that Hercules had stolen from Geryon, and was slain by that hero. In the mode of his death Dante follows Livy’s account, but in other respects Virgil served as his model. Cacus was not really a Centaur: Dante was evidently led astray by Virgil. (See Canto xii.)5. The five noble Florentines punished in this circle are (a) three spirits: Agnello of the Brunelleschi, a Ghibelline family; Buoso degli Abati, or, perhaps, de’ Donati (if the latter is intended, he is identical with the Buoso mentioned in Canto xxx); and Puccio Sciancato (“The Lame”) de’ Galigai; (b) Cianfa de’ Donati, who is merged with Agnello; (c) Francesco de’ Cavalcanti who assumes Buoso’s human shape, while Buoso becomes a serpent. He was slain by the people of Gaville (a village in the upper Val d’Arno), the murderers being summarily dealt with by his kinsmen.6. Sabellus and Nasidius, two soldiers of Cato’s army, who, in their march across the Libyan desert, were stung by serpents, with the result that the former was reduced to a kind of puddle, while the latter swelled to such a size that his coat of mail gave way (Lucan, Pharsalia, ix). The transformations of Cadmus and Arethusa are narrated by Ovid in Metam. iv and v.C A N T O X X V IDante, after having seen and recognized the five Noble Thieves, addresses his native city in bitter concentrated sorrow and shame, mingled with heartfelt longings and affection. The calamities which misgovernment, faction, and crime had been preparing for many years before the date of his mystic Vision, and which he himself as Chief Magistrate in 1300 had done his utmost to prevent, are notified in form of prophecy. His own exile, though not directly alluded to, and his hopes of “morning”—of deliverance for Florence and himself, and of justice on their enemies—were nearly connected with those calamities. And when he sees the fate of Evil Counsellors in the Eighth Chasm, to which his Guide now leads him, he “curbs his genius,” and deeply feels he has not to seek that deliverance and justice by fraud. The arts of the fox, on however great a scale, are extremely hateful to him. To employ that superior wisdom, which is the good gift of the Almighty, in deceiving others, for any purpose, is a Spiritual Theft of the most fearful kind; and the sinners, who have been guilty of it, are running along the narrow chasm, each “stolen” from view, wrapt in the Flame of his own Consciousness, and tormented by its burning. Ulysses and Diomed are also here united in punishment. The former, speaking through the Flame, relates the manner and place of his death.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Professor Plushenko had come under the veil of condolence with a store-bought Bundt cake and a bottle of Polish brandy. He was there to convince my mother to give him my father’s papers. I had the feeling he wanted something my father wouldn’t have given to him willingly. I felt a responsibility to watch and make sure the guy didn’t take advantage of my mother’s fragile state. Apparently the man had known my parents for many years. “You look just like your mother,” he said that night, leering at me. His skin was cardboard colored and matte, his lips weirdly red and gentle. He wore a striped gray suit and smelled of sweet cologne. “My daughter is barely nineteen years old,” my mother scoffed. She wasn’t defending me against his lechery. She was bragging. By then, I was actually twenty. Of course there was no dinner—my mother was incapable of providing that—but there were drinks. I was allowed to drink. After a few, the man sat down on the sofa between us. He spoke of my father’s invaluable contribution to future generations of scientists, how blessed he felt to have worked so closely beside him. “His legacy is in his students, and in his papers. I want to be the one to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. It’s precious material. It must be handled very thoughtfully.” My mother could barely speak then. She allowed a tear to run down her face, leaving a muddled gray stripe through her makeup. The man put one arm around her shoulders. “Oh, you poor thing. A tragic loss. He was a great man. I know how much he loved you.” I guess my mother was too aggrieved, too drunk, or too medicated to see the man’s other arm snake over from his knee to mine at some point during the conversation. I was drunk, too, and I kept still. When my mother got up to use the bathroom, we were left alone on the sofa, and there was a kiss on my forehead, a finger traced down the side of my neck and over my left nipple. I knew what he was doing. I did not resist. “You poor thing.” My nipple was still erect when my mother came back in, tripping over the edge of the carpet. My father had left everything to my mother, including the contents of his study. After she died, I was the one who went in there and packed things up and lugged the boxes to the basement. That colleague of his never saw a single page. What I was bartering for in letting that guy kiss me was still not immediately clear. Maybe my mother’s dignity. Or maybe I just wanted a little affection. Trevor and I had been on the outs for months at the time. I hadn’t called to tell him my father had died. I was saving it to tell him later, so he’d feel terrible.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Kiki was trying to fix something to her wrist, unsuccessfully. Now she looked up as the man took a half step back to give her a fuller view of him. She found she wanted very much to be right , and struggled for a minute between a few places she recalled having French history, unsure if she was right about any of them. She wondered about her own boredom. She must be very bored indeed to want to be right before this man. ‘Ivory . . .’ began Kiki cautiously, but his face repelled this, so she switched to Martinique. ‘ Haiti ,’ he said. ‘ Right . My – ’ began Kiki, but realized she did not want to say the word ‘cleaner’ in this context. She began again, ‘There’re so many Haitians here . . .’ She dared a little further: ‘And of course it’s so difficult, in Haiti, right now.’ The man put the hub of each hand firmly on the table between them and engaged her eyes. ‘ Yes . Terrible. So terrible . Now, every day – terror .’ The solemnity of this reply forced Kiki to turn her attention back to the bracelet sliding off her wrist. She had only the most vague sense of the difficulty she had made reference to (it had slid off the radar under the stress of other, more pressing difficulties, national and personal) and felt ashamed now to be caught under the pretence of having more knowledge than she possessed. ‘This is not for here – for here .’ he said, suddenly coming around the table and pointing at Kiki’s ankle.  On Beauty ‘ Oh . . . it’s like a . . . what do you call that, an anklet ?’ ‘Put here – put up here – please.’ Kiki released Murdoch to the floor and allowed this man to lift her foot on to the small bamboo stool. She had to rest her hand on his shoulder for balance. Kiki’s sarong opened a little and some of her thigh was revealed. Moisture sprang from the chubby crease behind her knee. The man did not seem to notice but remained purposeful, catching one sweaty loose end of the chain and bringing it round to meet the other. It was in this unorthodox position that Kiki found herself ambushed from behind. Two masculine hands grabbed her round her middle, squeezed – and then a hot red face materialized next to her own like the Cheshire Cat’s, kissing her damp cheek. ‘Jay – don’t be crazy – ’ ‘Keeks, wow – you’re all leg. What’re you trying to do, kill me?’ ‘Oh, my God – Warren – Hi . . . You almost killed me – Jesus – creeping like a fox – I thought it was Jerome, he’s around here someplace . . . God, I didn’t even know you guys were back.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Then one day I woke up to discover that I had dug out my digital camera and sent a bunch of strangers snapshots of my asshole, my nipple, the inside of my mouth. I’d written messages saying that I’d like it if they came and “tied me up” and “held me hostage” and “slurped my pussy like a plate of spaghetti.” And there were numbers in my cell phone log I didn’t recognize. So I made up a rule that whenever I took my pills, which was roughly every eight hours, I’d put my computer in the closet and power down my phone, seal it with packing tape in a Tupperware container, and stick the container in the back of a high kitchen cabinet. But then I woke up with the unopened Tupperware next to me on the pillow. The next night, the phone was on the window ledge, next to a dozen half-smoked cigarettes stubbed out on an Alanis Morissette CD case. “Why are you killing yourself?” Reva asked, seeing the butts in the trash can when she came over uninvited a few days later. Reva’s mother’s cancer had started in her lungs. “My smoking has nothing to do with you or your mother. My mother’s dead, too, you know,” I added. By this point, Reva’s mother was in hospice care, in and out of consciousness. I was tired of hearing about it. It brought back too many memories. Plus, I knew she’d expect me to go to her mother’s funeral. I really didn’t want to do that. “My mom’s not dead yet,” Reva said. I didn’t tell Reva about my Internet proclivities. But I did ask her to change my AOL password to something I could never guess. “Just some random letters and numbers. I waste too much time online,” I told her. “Doing what?” “I send e-mails late at night and regret it,” was the lie I knew she would believe. “To Trevor, right?” she asked, nodding her head knowingly. Reva changed my password, and once my AOL account was inaccessible, my sleep stayed low stakes for a while. The worst I did while I was unconscious was write letters to Trevor on a yellow legal pad—long petitions about our romantic history and how I wanted things to change so that we could be together again. The letters were so ridiculous, I wondered if they were written in my sleep to keep me entertained while I was awake. By the end of the month, my blackout excursions down to the bodega had become less frequent, maybe due to the onset of winter. Reva’s visits became less frequent, too. And her attitude shifted from melodrama to polite posturing. Instead of venting, she gave well-articulated summaries of her week, including the latest current events. I appreciated her

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  I had lost weight during our strange journey but I was still rather too fat for fashion; not obese but just about ten pounds too plump to get away with a bikini. Medium-sized breasts, big ass, deep navel. Some men claimed to like my figure. I knew (in the way one knows things one does not quite believe) that I was considered pretty and that even my big ass was considered attractive by some, but I loathed every extra ounce of fat. It had been a lifelong struggle: gaining weight, losing it, gaining it back with interest. Every extra ounce was proof of my own weakness and sloth and self-indulgence. Every extra ounce proved how right I was to loathe myself, how vile and disgusting I was. Excess flesh was connected with sex—that much I knew. At fourteen, when I had starved myself down to ninety-eight pounds, it was out of guilt about sex. Even after I had lost all the weight I wanted to lose—and more—I would deny myself water. I wanted to feel empty. Unless the hunger pangs boomed resoundingly, I hated myself for my indulgence. Clearly a pregnancy fantasy—as my husband the shrink would say—or maybe a pregnancy phobia. My unconscious believed that my jerking off Steve had made me pregnant and I was getting thinner and thinner to try to convince myself it wasn’t so. Or else maybe I longed to be pregnant, primitively believed that all the orifices of the body were one, and feared that any food I took would seed my intestines like sperm, and fruit would grow from me. You are what you eat. Mann ist was mann isst. The war between the sexes began with the sinking of male teeth into a female apple. Pluto lured Persephone to hell with six pomegranate seeds. Once she had eaten them the bargain was unbreakable. To eat was to seal one’s doom. Close your eyes and open your mouth. Down the hatch. Eat, darling, eat. “Just eat your name,” grandmother used to say. “My whole name?” “I…” she wheedled…(a mouthful of detested liver)…“S…” (a lump of mashed potatoes and carrots)…“A…” (more hard, overcooked liver)…“D…” (another lump of cold, carroty potato)…“O…” (a limp floweret of broccoli)…“R…” (she raises the liver to my lips again and I bolt from the table)…“you’ll get beriberi!” she shouts after me. Everyone in my family has a whole repertory of deficiency diseases (which haven’t been heard of in New York for decades). My grandmother is practically uneducated, but she knows about beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, rickets, trichinosis, round worms, tape worms…you name it. Anything you can get from eating or not eating. She actually had my mother convinced that unless I had a freshly squeezed glass of orange juice every day, I would get scurvy, and she was constantly regaling me with stories about the British navy and limes. Limey. You are what you eat.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  And would it make me pregnant? Or maybe my refusal had something to do with the continuing social education which my mother was instilling in me along with Art History. Steve lived in the Bronx. I lived in a duplex on Central Park West. If I was going to worship a “phallos” it was not going to be a Bronx phallos. Perhaps one from Sutton Place? Ultimately, I said goodbye to Steve and took up masturbation, fasting, and poetry. I kept telling myself that masturbation at least kept me pure. Steve continued to woo me with bottles of Chanel No. 5, Frank Sinatra records, and beautifully lettered quotations from the poems of Yeats. He called me whenever he got drunk and on every one of my birthdays for the next five years. (Was it just jerking him off which inspired such loyalty?) But meanwhile I repented for my self-indulgence by undergoing a sort of religious conversion which included starvation (I denied myself even water), studying Siddhartha, and losing twenty pounds (and with them, my periods). I also got a Joblike rash of boils and was sent to my first dermatologist—a German lady refugee who said, memorably, “Za skeen is za meeroar of za zoul” and who referred me to the first of my many psychiatrists, a short doctor whose name was Schrift. — Dr. Schrift (the very same Dr. Schrift who had flown to Vienna with us) was a follower of Wilhelm Stekel and he tucked his shoelaces under the toes of his shoes. (I am not sure whether or not this was part of the Stekelian method.) His apartment building on Madison Avenue had very dark and narrow halls whose walls were covered with gold, seashell-spotted wallpaper, such as you might find in the bathroom of an old house in Larchmont. Waiting for the elevator, I used to stare at the wallpaper and wonder if the landlord had gotten a good deal on a bathroom wallpaper closeout. Why else paper a lobby with gold seashells and tiny pink fishes? Dr. Schrift had two Utrillo prints and one Braque. (It was my first shrink, so I didn’t realize these were the standard APA-approved prints.) He also had a Danish-modern desk (also APA-approved), and a brownish Foamland couch with a compulsive little plastic cover at the foot and a hard wedge-shaped pillow, covered with a paper napkin, at the head. He insisted that the horse I was dreaming about was my father. I was fourteen and starving myself to death in penance for having finger-fucked on my parents’ avocado-green silk couch. He insisted that the coffin I was dreaming about was my mother. What could be the reason my periods had stopped? A mystery. “Because I don’t want to be a woman. Because it’s too confusing. Because Shaw says you can’t be a woman and an artist.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  They didn’t need to come here. In Wellington terms, he was already a dead man walking, with no book coming any time soon, surely heading for a messy divorce and on a sabbatical that looked suspiciously like the first step towards retirement. But they had come. He apologized again for his tardiness and spoke self-deprecatingly of his inexperience and inability with the technology he was about to use. It was halfway through this preliminary speech that Howard  On Beauty visualized with perfect clarity the yellow folder that remained where he had left it, on the back seat of his car, five blocks from here. Abruptly he stopped speaking and remained silent for a minute. He could hear people moving in their seats. He could smell the tang of himself strongly. What did he look like to these people? He pressed the red button. The lights began to go down, very slowly, on a dimmer, as if Howard were trying to romance his audience. He looked out across the crowd to find the man responsible for this special effect and found instead Kiki, sixth row, far right, looking up with interest at the image behind him, which was beginning to refine itself in the coming darkness. She wore a scarlet ribbon threaded through her plait, and her shoulders were bare and gleaming. Howard pressed the red button again. A picture came up. He waited a minute and then pressed it once more. Another picture. He kept pressing. People appeared: angels and staalmeesters and merchants and surgeons and students and writers and peasants and kings and the artist himself. And the artist himself. And the artist himself. The man from Pomona began to nod appreciatively. Howard pressed the red button. He could hear Jack French saying to his eldest son, in his characteristically loud whisper: You see , Ralph, the order is meaningful . Howard pressed the red button. Nothing happened. He had come to the end of the line. He looked out and spotted Kiki, smiling into her lap. The rest of his audience were faintly frowning at the back wall. Howard turned his head and looked at the picture behind him. ‘ Hendrickje Bathing , ,’ croaked Howard and said no more. On the wall, a pretty, blousy Dutch woman in a simple white smock paddled in water up to her calves. Howard’s audience looked at her and then at Howard and then at the woman once more, awaiting elucidation. The woman, for her part, looked away, coyly, into the water. She seemed to be considering whether to wade deeper. The surface of the water was dark, reflective – a cautious bather could not be certain of what lurked beneath. Howard looked at Kiki. In her face, his life. Kiki looked up suddenly at Howard – not, he thought, unkindly. Howard said nothing. Another silent  on beauty and being wrong minute passed.

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

  They are merely beliefs that come from an outdated view of human nature. The examples I’ve chosen represent only a small slice of the issue, both on the legal side and on the science side. I’ve barely scratched the surface of emotion stereotypes of ethnic groups, for example, who face similar struggles in and out of court. As long as the law codifies emotion stereotypes, people will continue to be the target of inconsistent rulings. 2 6 … When Stefania Albertani pled guilty to drugging and killing her own sister, not to mention setting the corpse on fire, her defense team took a bold step and blamed her brain. Brain imaging revealed that two regions of Albertani’s cortex contained fewer neurons than a control group of ten other healthy women. The re gions were the insula, which the defense claimed was associated with aggression, and the anterior cingulate gyrus, which allegedly was associated with lowering one’s inhibitions. Two expert witnesses concluded that a “causal relationship” between her brain structure and her crime was possible. After this testimony, Albertani’s jail sentence was reduced from life imprisonment to twenty years. 2 7 Legal decisions like this one, which was a media sensation in Italy in 2011, are becoming more common as lawyers employ neuroscience findings in their defense strategy. But are these decisions justified? Can brain structure explain why someone committed a crime? Can a region of a certain size or connectivity actually cause murderous behavior, and in the process, make a defendant less responsible for a crime? 2 8 Legal arguments like those made by Albertani’s defense team grossly misrepresent neuroscience findings and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. It is just not possible to localize a complex, psychological category like “Aggression” to one set of neurons, because of degeneracy; “Aggression,” like any other concept, may be implemented differently in the brain each time it’s constructed. Even simple actions like hitting or biting have not been localized to a single set of neurons in the human brain. 2 9 The brain regions mentioned by Albertani’s defense team are among the most highly connected hubs in the entire brain. They show increased activation for just about every mental event you can list, from language to pain to math skills. So, sure, they might play a role in aggression and impulsivity in some instances. But it’s a stretch to claim any specific causal relationship between these regions and the extreme aggression of murder . . . if Albertani’s motive was even aggression in the first place. 3 0 It’s also a stretch to claim that variation in brain size translates into variation in behavior. No two brains are exactly alike. They generally have the same parts, roughly in the same place, connected together in pretty much the same way, but at a fine-grained level, in their microcircuitry, they have vast differences. Some may translate into behavioral differences, but many do not.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  I was just wondering who ‘‘they’’ are.’ ‘Oh, now Howard, don’t get angry about nothing. You’re always so angry!’ ‘No,’ said Howard, in a tone of pedantic insistence, ‘I’m just trying to understand the point of the story you just told me. Are you trying to explain to me that the women were lesbians?’ Harold’s face creased into the picture of distressed aesthetic sensitivity, as if Howard had just put his foot through The Mona Lisa . The Mona Lisa . A painting Harold loves. When Howard was having his first pieces of criticism printed in the sorts of papers Harold never buys, a customer of Harold’s had shown the butcher a cutting of his son writing enthusiastically about Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’Artista . Harold closed the shop and went down the road with a handful of twopence to use the phone. ‘Shit in a jar? Why can’t you write about somefing lovely, like The Mona Lisa ? Your mum would be so proud of that. Shit in a jar? ’ ‘There’s no need for that, Howard,’ said Harold soothingly now. ‘It’s just my way of talking – I ain’t seen you in so long, just happy to see you, aren’t I, just trying to find something to say, you know . . .’  On Beauty Howard, with what he considered to be superhuman effort, said nothing further. Together they watched Countdown . Harold passed his son a little white pad on which to do his calculations. Howard scored well through the word round, doing better than both the contestants of the show. Meanwhile Harold struggled. His highest was a five-letter word. But in the numbers round, the power changed hands. There are always a few things our parents know about us that nobody else does. Harold Belsey was the only person who knew that when it came to the manipulation of numbers, Dr Howard Belsey, M.A., Ph.D., was a mere child. Even the most basic of multiplications required a calculator. He had been able to hide this for more than twenty years in seven different universities. But in Harold’s living room the truth would out. ‘One hundred and fifty-six,’ announced Harold, which was the target amount. ‘What you got, son?’ ‘A hundred and . . . No, I’m nowhere. Nothing.’ ‘Got you, Professor!’ ‘You did.’ ‘Yeah, well . . .’ agreed Harold, nodding as the contestant on the television explained her rather convoluted ‘workings out’. ‘ ’Course you can do it that way, love, but mine’s a damn sight prettier.’ Howard laid down his pen and pressed his hands to his temples. ‘You all right, Howard? You’ve had a face like a smacked arse since you got in here. Everything all right at home?’ Howard looked up at his father and decided to do something he never did.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Professor Plushenko had come under the veil of condolence with a store-bought Bundt cake and a bottle of Polish brandy. He was there to convince my mother to give him my father’s papers. I had the feeling he wanted something my father wouldn’t have given to him willingly. I felt a responsibility to watch and make sure the guy didn’t take advantage of my mother’s fragile state. Apparently the man had known my parents for many years. “You look just like your mother,” he said that night, leering at me. His skin was cardboard colored and matte, his lips weirdly red and gentle. He wore a striped gray suit and smelled of sweet cologne. “My daughter is barely nineteen years old,” my mother scoffed. She wasn’t defending me against his lechery. She was bragging. By then, I was actually twenty. Of course there was no dinner—my mother was incapable of providing that—but there were drinks. I was allowed to drink. After a few, the man sat down on the sofa between us. He spoke of my father’s invaluable contribution to future generations of scientists, how blessed he felt to have worked so closely beside him. “His legacy is in his students, and in his papers. I want to be the one to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. It’s precious material. It must be handled very thoughtfully.” My mother could barely speak then. She allowed a tear to run down her face, leaving a muddled gray stripe through her makeup. The man put one arm around her shoulders. “Oh, you poor thing. A tragic loss. He was a great man. I know how much he loved you.” I guess my mother was too aggrieved, too drunk, or too medicated to see the man’s other arm snake over from his knee to mine at some point during the conversation. I was drunk, too, and I kept still. When my mother got up to use the bathroom, we were left alone on the sofa, and there was a kiss on my forehead, a finger traced down the side of my neck and over my left nipple. I knew what he was doing. I did not resist. “You poor thing.” My nipple was still erect when my mother came back in, tripping over the edge of the carpet. My father had left everything to my mother, including the contents of his study. After she died, I was the one who went in there and packed things up and lugged the boxes to the basement. That colleague of his never saw a single page. What I was bartering for in letting that guy kiss me was still not immediately clear. Maybe my mother’s dignity. Or maybe I just wanted a little affection. Trevor and I had been on the outs for months at the time. I hadn’t called to tell him my father had died. I was saving it to tell him later, so he’d feel terrible.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  It was horrendous thinking about him, having him refracted through Zora’s features. Now that Claire’s part in Howard’s indiscretion was no longer a secret, the guilt had moved from private indulgence to public punishment. Not that she minded the shame; she had been the mistress on other occasions and had not been especially cowed by it then. But this time it was infuriating and humiliating to be punished for something she’d done with so little desire or will. She was a woman still controlled by the traumas of her girlhood. It made more sense to put her three-year-old self in the dock. As Dr Byford explained, she was really the victim of a vicious, peculiarly female psychological disorder: she felt one thing and did another. She was a stranger to herself. And were they still like that, she wondered – these new girls, this new generation? Did they still feel one thing and do another? Did they still only want to be wanted? Were they still objects of desire instead of – as Howard might put it – desiring subjects? Thinking of the girls sat cross-legged with her in this basement, of Zora in front of her, of the angry girls who shouted their poetry from the stage – no, she could see no serious change. Still starving themselves, still reading women’s magazines that explicitly hate women, still cutting themselves with little knives in places they think can’t be seen, still faking their orgasms with men they dislike, still lying to  the anatomy lesson everybody about everything. Strangely, Kiki Belsey had always struck Claire as a wonderful anomaly in exactly this sense. Claire remembered when Howard first met his wife, back when Kiki was a nursing student in New York. At that time her beauty was awesome, almost unspeakable, but more than this she radiated an essential female nature Claire had already imagined in her poetry – natural, honest, powerful, unmediated, full of something like genuine desire. A goddess of the everyday. She was not one of Howard’s intellectual set, but she was actively political, and her beliefs were genuine and well expressed. Womanish , as they said back then, not feminine . For Claire, Kiki was not only evidence of Howard’s humanity but proof that a new kind of woman had come into the world as promised, as advertised. Without ever becoming intimates, she felt she could honestly say that she and Kiki had always been fond of each other. Never had she resented Kiki or wished her ill. And here Claire emerged out of herself; refocused on Zora’s features so that hers was again a sovereign face and not a blur of colour and personal thoughts. It was not possible to make the last leap – to consider what it was Kiki now thought of Claire. To do that was to become subhuman before yourself, the person cast out beyond pity, a Caliban. Nobody can cast themselves out.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  He broke up with me the first time freshman year because I was “too young and immature. I can’t be the one to help you grow out of your abandonment issues,” he explained. “It’s too much of a responsibility. You deserve someone who can really support your emotional development.” So I spent that summer at home upstate with my parents and had sex with a boy from high school, who was far more sensual and interested in how the clitoris “works,” but not quite patient enough to really interact with mine successfully. It was helpful, though. I reclaimed a bit of my dignity by feeling nothing for that boy, using him. By Labor Day, when I moved into Delta Gamma, Trevor and I were back together. Over the next five years, Trevor would periodically deplete his self-esteem in relationships with older women, i.e., women his age, then return to me to reboot. I was always available. I dated guys from time to time, but there was never another real “boyfriend,” if I could even call Trevor that. He wouldn’t have agreed to carry that title. There were plenty of one-night stands in college while we were on the outs, but nothing worth repeating. After I graduated and was flung into the world of adulthood—already orphaned—I was bolder in my desperation, made frequent appeals to Trevor to take me back. I could hear his cock harden on the phone whenever I called to beg him to come over and hold me. “I’ll see if I can squeeze it in,” he’d say. Then he’d be there and I’d shiver in his arms like the child I still was, swoon with gratitude for his recognition, savor the weight of him in the bed next to me. It was as though he were some divine messenger, my soul mate, my savior, whatever. Trevor would be very pleased to spend a night at my apartment on East Eighty-fourth Street, earning back all the bravado he’d lost in his last affair. I hated seeing that come on in him. One time he said he was afraid of fucking me “too passionately” because he didn’t want to break my heart. So he fucked me efficiently, selfishly, and when he was done, he’d get dressed and check his pager, comb his hair, kiss my forehead, and leave. I asked Trevor once, “If you could have only blow jobs or only intercourse for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?” “Blow jobs,” he answered. “That’s kind of gay, isn’t it?” I said. “To be more interested in mouths than pussies?” He didn’t speak to me for weeks.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Yet surely no one among these white people could be more musical than Jerome, who, Kiki now noticed, was crying. She opened her mouth with genuine surprise and then, fearful of breaking some spell, closed it again. The tears were silent and plentiful. Kiki felt moved, and then another feeling interceded: pride. I don’t understand, she thought, but he does. A young black man of intelligence and sensibility, and I have raised him. After all, how many other young black men would even come to an event like this – I bet there isn’t one in this entire crowd, thought Kiki,  kipps and belsey and then checked and was mildly annoyed to find that indeed there was one, a tall young man with an elegant neck, sitting next to her daughter. Undeterred, Kiki continued her imaginary speech to the imaginary guild of black American mothers: And there’s no big secret, not at all, you just need to have faith, I guess, and you need to counter the dismal self-image that black men receive as their birthright from America – that’s essential – and, I don’t know . . . get involved in after-school activities, have books around the house, and sure, have a little money, and a house with outdoor . . . Kiki abandoned her parental reverie for a moment to tug at Zora’s sleeve and point out the marvel of Jerome, as if these tears were rolling down the cheek of a stone madonna. Zora glanced over, shrugged and returned to Professor Gould. Kiki returned her own gaze to the moon. So much more lovely than the sun and you can look at it without fear of harm. A few minutes later, she was preparing to make a final, concentrated effort to match the sung words with the text on the page when suddenly it was over. She was so surprised she came late to the clapping, although not as late as Howard, whom it had only just awoken. ‘That it, then?’ he said, springing from his chair. ‘Everyone been touched by the Christian sublime? Can we go now?’ ‘We have to find Levi. We can’t go without him . . . maybe we should try Jerome’s cell . . . I don’t know if it’s on.’ Kiki looked up at her husband with sudden curiosity. ‘What, so you hated it? How can you hate it?’ ‘Levi’s over there,’ said Jerome, waving towards a tree a hundred yards away. ‘Hey – Levi!’ ‘Well, I thought it was amazing,’ pressed Kiki. ‘It’s obviously the work of a genius – ’ Howard groaned at the term. ‘Oh, Howard, come on – you have to be a genius to write music like that.’ ‘Music like what? Define genius.’

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Tue next day how my master the gardener sped I know not, but the gentle soldier, who had been so well beaten for his exceeding cowardice, led me from my manger to his lodging (as it seemed to me) without the contradiction of any man. There he laded me well, and garnished my body for the way like an ass of arms. For on the one side I bare a helmet that shined exceedingly; on the other side a target that glittered more a thousandfold ; and on the top of my burden he had put along spear. Now these things he placed thus gallantly, not because such was the rule of arms, but to the end he might make fear those which passed by, when they saw such a similitude of war piled upon the heap of baggage, When we had gone a good part of our journey, over the plain and easy fields, we fortuned to come to a little town, where we lodged, not at an inn, but at a certain corporal’s house. And there the soldier took me to one of the servants, while he himself went carefully towards his captain, who had the charge of a thousand men. When we had remained there a few days, I understood of a wicked and mischievous deed committed there, which I have put in writing, to the end you may know the same. The master of the house had a young son instructed in good literature, and therefore endowed with virtuous manners, but especially with shamefastness, such a one as you would desire to have the like. Now -AT3 LUCIUS APULEIUS quoque provenisse cuperes vel talem. Huius matre multo ante defuncta, rursum matrimonium sibi repara- verat, ductaque alia filium procreaverat alium, qui adaequeiam duodecimum annumaetatis supercesserat. Sed noverca forma magis quam moribus in domo mariti praepollens, seu naturaliter impudica seu fato ad ex- tremum impulsa flagitium, oculos ad privignum adiecit : iam ergo, lector optime, scito te tragoediam, non fabulam legere, et a socco ad cothurnum ascen- dere Sed mulier illa quamdiu primis elementis Cupido parvulus nutriebatur, imbecillis adhuc eius viribus facile ruborem tenuem deprimens silentio resistebat: at ubi, completis igne vesano totis prae- cordiis, immodice bacchatus Amor exaestuabat, saevienti deo iam succubuit, et languore simulato vulnus animi mentitur in corporis valetudine. | Iam cetera salutis vultusque detrimenta et aegris et amantibus examussim convenire nemo qui nesciat : pallor deformis, marcentes oculi, lassa genua, quies turbida et suspiritus cruciatus tarditate vehementior : crederes et illam fluctuare tantum vaporibus febrium, nisi quod etflebat. Heu medicorum ignarae mentes! Quid venae pulsus, quid caloris intemperantia, quid fatigatus anhelitus et utrimquesecus iactatae crebriter laterum mutuae vicissitudines? Dii boni! Quam facilis licet non artifici medico, cuivis tamen docto Veneriae cupidinis comprehensio, cum videas aliquem 474 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK X