Surprise

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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) If then you disbelieve the first, (i. e. the forgiveness of sins,) behold, I add another, seeing that I lay open your inmost thoughts. Again, another that I make whole the body of the palsied man. Hence He adds, Whether is it easier? It is very plain that it is easier to restore the body to health. For as the soul is far nobler than the body, so is the forgiveness of sins more excellent than the healing of the body. But since you believe not the former, because it is hid; I will add that which is inferior, yet more open, in order that thereby that which is secret may be made manifest. And indeed in addressing the sick man, He said not, I forgive thee thy sins, expressing His own power, but, Thy sins are forgiven thee. But they compelled Him to declare more plainly His own power to them, when He said, But that you may know. THEOPHYLACT. Observe that on earth He forgives sins. For while we are on earth we can blot out our sins. But after that we are taken away from the earth, we shall not be able to confess, for the gate is shut. CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) He shews the pardon of sins by the healing of the body. Hence it follows, He says unto the sick of the palsy, I say unto thee, Rise. But He manifests the healing of the body by the carrying of the bed, that so that which took place might be accounted no shadow. Hence it follows, Take up thy bed. As if He said, “I was willing through thy suffering to cure those who think that they are in health, while their souls are sick, but since they are unwilling, go and correct thy household.” AMBROSE. Nor is there any delay, health is present; there is but one moment both of words, and healing. Hence it follows, And immediately he rose. From this fact it is evident, that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins; He said this both for Himself and us. For He as God made man, as the Lord of the law, forgives sins; we also have been chosen to receive from Him the same marvellous grace. For it was said to the disciples, Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them. (John 20:23.) But how does He not Himself forgive sins, Who has given to others the power of doing so? But the kings and princes of the earth when they acquit homicides, release them from their present punishment, but cannot expiate their crimes. AMBROSE. They behold him rising up, still disbelieving, and marvel at his departing; as it follows, And they were all amazed.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  We turned a corner and there it was, at the end of the street. It gave me a shock: not only its nightmarish appearance—the bleak, battlemented tower so out of scale with the low old cottages around it, the derelict theatricality of the porch, with its barley-sugar columns and shit-crusted ledges—but also the shot of pure recall, my first hours here, full of forced excitement and independence, fighting back home-sickness. "The area's suffered a lot in the past ten years. There used to be several factories across the canal but they've all been closed down." "And I believe there was a hotel?" I said—half-expecting to be told there wasn't. "The old Pilgrimage and Commercial? Quite right. You have picked up an amazing knowledge of the town." I thought how lamentably wide of the mark that was. Anything I knew had been absorbed unconsciously on my wishful loopings through certain quarters; I'd been incurious about every history but one. When we entered the church Paul swept off his hat and at the first pew-end dipped to one knee, his coat fanned for a second behind him on the stones. I was surprised, and the way he rose and hurried me on suggested it was mere habit, a conciliatory gesture to the believers kneeling here and there in prayer. In front of them, and at several side-altars, pyramids of patchy candle-light lit up the insensible faces of saints and Virgins. Beyond that there was only an impression of decrepitude and Romanesque gloom. I followed Paul as he wandered down a narrow aisle, almost blocked with the black wardrobes of confessionals. Perhaps we should just pop into one of those and get it over with. Then he turned back, he seemed uncertain himself, hesitated with a hand on my shoulder, looked guardedly across the scattering of kneeling figures. "Let's stay a moment," he muttered, and slipped into a pew. I followed him again and sat by him waiting. There was a sombre echo. It was as if a coffin might any moment be brought in. Sometimes a careworn old woman entered, or another ended her prayers and shuffled out; sometimes a shuffling old man, a widower among all these widows who presumably believed in miracles and hell. The church was lively, in its destitute way, compared with the emptiness of the streets outside.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I was astonished, once I had sobered up, to find that I was Matt's lover: I thought it might have come about through something Cherif had said to him, an inadvertent testimonial. When I looked at myself in Matt's bathroom mirror I seemed to be greeting with new respect an acquaintance I had long thought unlikely to succeed. But then it was an odd sort of success: lover, perhaps, was hardly the word for my role. Matt was like someone beautiful I might have met on the common and counted myself lucky to have ten minutes with under the trees. There was no sentiment to it, beyond the minimal trust of two people pleasuring themselves together; when my instincts homed sleepily towards love I felt him hold me off, cold-eyed, as if my sheltering embrace had been a threat or lapse of form. For all his trickiness, there was no romantic con. I wasn't even sure he had much grasp of friendship. He seemed able to sustain that pure detachment of sex from feeling that normally crumbles with the loss of anonymity or the chance of a second meeting. It threw me back to my great sex-period, the days of saving up for Croy's. And half the time I saw it suited me; with Matt I did the dozen things I couldn't do with Luc. I stayed at Matt's for most of that week, partly because of the Spanish girls—not so much their noise as my fear that they might make a noise, intrude some unwanted disturbance on the nervy, luxurious disquiet which was mine already and which kept me pacing about, drinking and after a while smoking, reading a paragraph a dozen absent times, gazing from the window when the day waned as if trying to decipher some truth, or rather some hope, from the trees and clouds and time-blackened brick. In the little lost garden below the first leaves were turning. At Matt's there were no such distractions. I would be there as a rule only after the Cassette had shut, drunk and demanding, and each visit described a slowing arc from fucky oblivion to parched and anxious waking, stumbling dressing and going home. It was the hours of half-sleep that were the longest, and through which the green figures of the alarm-clock, between tiny spasms of dreaming, kept their steadiest vigil. Time was tearing along, but it would never be morning.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Archie asked in tones of gossipy shock. I had to think for a second. There was a Desmond at the Corry; but he must mean ‘little’ Des, dancing Des. It was yet another sentimental history salvaged from the nightclub floor. ‘You mean little Des?’ ‘Yeah, you know. You had that threesome with him and that bloke from Watford.’ ‘You seem to know a lot about my sex life.’ ‘Yeah, well, he told me. Anyway, he got involved in some other really heavy scene. This taxi-driver that tied him up and whipped him. Anyway, one night things got well out of hand and this cunt goes off and leaves little Des tied up in some garridge, with rats and stuff, and he’s got burns all over him. He was there for three days till some old bird found him. He’s in hospital now, and he don’t look good.’ Archie was pleased to be able to tell me this horrible news, but I saw him swallow and knew he was as shocked in the retelling as I was, hearing it for the first time. While he was speaking the lighting system had gone over to ultra-violet, so that the dancers’ teeth and any white clothes they were still wearing glowed blueish white. Seen through the tank these gleaming dots and zones themselves seemed to be swimming and darting in the water and to mingle with the pale phosphorescence of the fish. There were two or three sickening seconds. The vulnerability of little Des. The warped bastard who had hurt him. A face passing beyond the glass, turning to look in, mouth opening in a luminous yawn. I got up with such suddenness that Archie and Phil, leaning on either side of me, tumbled together. ‘Must have a piss,’ I said. But I was hardly thinking of them: my heart was racing, excited relief rose in a physical sensation through my body, I felt angry—I didn’t know why—and frightened at my own lack of control. Over and over, under my breath, or perhaps not even vocalised, just the shouting of my pulse, I said, ‘He’s alive, he’s alive.’ I caught up with him on the far side of the dance floor, was on him even before he recognised me, and flung my arms round him; we fell back against the wall, where he held me off a moment to look at me. ‘Will,’ he said, and smiled only a little. I was kissing him and then bundling him down the passage and through the swing door. A couple of guys were rolling joints on the edge of the washbasin and looked up nervously. A lock-up was empty and I pushed him in in front of me, falling back with amazement against the door when I had bolted it.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  ‘I’m going to show you a short piece of film which I believe will interest you all. It’s part of a whole lot of home-movie stuff I’ve just bought at Christie’s. Most of it’s too madly dull for words—you know, gay young things arsing around with no shame. I just thought it might be fun, and give me some sort of ideas for some Twenties and Thirties—er—pictures I want to make. And then in amongst it there was this fragment—quite exceptional …’ The bright white square at which we had been looking was convulsed with running black and grey, and white flashes. The first thing we could make out was a brief and static view of a lake with steep woods around it. The light in the picture was strangely bleak, and a hundred little lines ran up and down the screen. Even so there was something mysterious about that seemingly black circle of water. Remembered books suggested it was an extinct volcano. ‘Aha,’ said Charles, very smugly. The camera angle jumped to include, possibly by mistake, the bonnet of an early-looking motorcar. ‘You know where we are, Charles,’ said Staines from behind the purring projector. ‘Oh yes—Lake Nemi. Unmistakable.’ There was then a shot held unnecessarily long, of a tin sign saying ‘Genzano—Città Infiorita’. ‘I think we all know where we are now,’ Staines added patly. An old peasant in a hat and carrying a stick as tall as himself limped into view, looking troublesome. The following sequences took place presumably in the precipitous streets of Genzano. Here was the car again, drawn up outside what might have been the town’s smartest café. The citizens, some aware of the camera, some at least showing no awareness, went stiffly up and down the pavement, turning flickering smiles or frowns. Some of them were getting up from the tables outside under the awning, couples bustling off, while others, with raising of hats, went into the absolute blackness of the interior. One side of the picture was then obscured by a man’s back. He half-turned and wavered in evident response to the cameraman’s protest, and shuffled away to the left. Then he reappeared full-length further off, and took up a position against the car, full of Chaplinesque fidgets, crossing his arms, cocking an ankle on the running-board, turning his head in ladylike parody from side to side. It clearly wasn’t Charles, though even a sensible person, I knew, might act up like this when a camera was running. It was a taller but thinner man. Moreover it was a bona fide queen. He had on elegant, unEnglish light suiting, with a bow-tie and a broad-brimmed straw hat which gave him a sweetly arcadian character, at the same time as shadowing his face. Then, overcome with embarrassment, he walked rapidly towards the camera, loomed in with peculiar closeness for a couple of seconds, high cheekbones, a long curved nose, funny little mouth. James was gripping my arm. ‘It’s Ronald Firbank,’ he said.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  The citizens, some aware of the camera, some at least showing no awareness, went stiffly up and down the pavement, turning flickering smiles or frowns. Some of them were getting up from the tables outside under the awning, couples bustling off, while others, with raising of hats, went into the absolute blackness of the interior. One side of the picture was then obscured by a man’s back. He half-turned and wavered in evident response to the cameraman’s protest, and shuffled away to the left. Then he reappeared full-length further off, and took up a position against the car, full of Chaplinesque fidgets, crossing his arms, cocking an ankle on the running-board, turning his head in ladylike parody from side to side. It clearly wasn’t Charles, though even a sensible person, I knew, might act up like this when a camera was running. It was a taller but thinner man. Moreover it was a bona fide queen. He had on elegant, unEnglish light suiting, with a bow-tie and a broad-brimmed straw hat which gave him a sweetly arcadian character, at the same time as shadowing his face. Then, overcome with embarrassment, he walked rapidly towards the camera, loomed in with peculiar closeness for a couple of seconds, high cheekbones, a long curved nose, funny little mouth. James was gripping my arm. ‘It’s Ronald Firbank,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there can be any doubt, do you?’ said Staines. ‘That’s certainly him,’ pronounced Charles. ‘If it’s what I think it is,’ said James, ‘it must be at the very end of his life.’ And in the next little bit he was laughing and suddenly it was going wrong: he had started to cough and cough, doubling up, his long hand gestured the camera away. I understood then, in the next scene, why he looked so frail, had the air of a man nonetheless confronting a threat. He was tackling a steep cobbled hill at the top of which a church was outlined in the late afternoon sun. His whole walk was anyway extraordinary, not best calculated for getting from one place to another, a business of undulating hands and picked tiny steps, and yet obviously inescapable: that was how he walked. A couple of small children at the roadside watched him pass and then started to follow him. One understood their sense that anything so conspicuous must be done deliberately, as an entertainment or as the origin of a procession. A taller boy, a ten-year-old in ragged clothes, joined them, imitating the novelist’s walk. The little ones, emboldened, skipped round him, running ahead as well to see him coming on, openly curious, asking questions, it seemed, of two or three syllables. The hectic jerkiness of the film lent them all a fantastical twitching energy.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  So, there it was, after all, anyway, in the newspapers, and I, too, had to meet the press. "I've got a religious medallion," Tony said-he has become a kind of Muslim, or, at least, an anti-Christian-"and the guard told me the other day that they were going to let me have it back again. Because they took it, you know. And I wanted it back. It means a lot to me-I'm not about to kill myself with it, I'm not about to kill myself. So, when the guard walked in, I asked him for it because he said he would bring it to me Friday night." (And this was Friday.) "Well, I don't know, he jumped salty and he walked out. And I started beating on the door of my cell, trying to make him come back, to listen to me, at least to explain to me why I couldn't have it, after he'd promised. And then the door opened and fifteen men walked in and they beat me up-fifteen men!" The headline on one of the German newspapers, which, incongruously or cunningly enough also has beneath the headline an old photograph of myself, laughing, is: "Tony Never Lies"! This means at least two things, for it is not hu manly possible for it to mean what it says. It means that Tony has never lied to me, though I have frequently watched him attempt to delude me into his delusions: but we human beings do this with each other all the time. Friends and lovers are able, sometimes, not always, to resist and correct the delu sions. But it also means something exceedingly difficult to capture, which is that some people are liars, and some people are not. We will return to this speculation later. Somewhere in the Bible there is the chilling observation: Ye are liars, and the truth's not in you. I had been in London when Malcolm was murdered. The sister who worked for me then, Gloria, had the habit, when ever she decided that it was time to get me out of town, of simply arbitrarily picking up an invitation, it scarcely mattered to where, and putting me on a plane; so, for example, we once found ourselves in the midnight sun of Helsinki . This time, we were the guests of my British publishers, in London, and we were staying at the Hilton. On this particular night, we TO BE BAPTIZED 4 25 were free and we had decided to treat ourselves to a really fancy, friendly dinner.

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

  She initially attempted to misdirect the officer and the investigators in an effort to protect her privacy. It wasn’t a smart thing to do, but she was outraged by their prodding. When Lewellen noticed the marked grave beside the Colbey’s home, Marsha admitted it was the burial site for her recently delivered stillborn son. Kathleen Enstice, a forensic pathologist who worked for the state, was summoned to exhume the infant’s body. Marsha was shocked that law enforcement would do something so upsetting without justification. As soon as the baby was exhumed but before she had an opportunity to formally examine the body, Enstice told an investigator that she believed that the baby had been born alive. She later conceded that she had no basis for such an opinion and that without an autopsy and tests there was no way she could know if a baby had been born alive. As it turned out, Enstice had a history of prematurely and incorrectly declaring deaths to be homicides without adequate supporting evidence. The pathologist subsequently performed an autopsy at the Department of Forensic Sciences laboratory in Mobile. She not only concluded that Marsha Colbey’s baby was born alive but also asserted that the child would have survived with medical attention. Even though most experts agree that forensic pathologists—who primarily deal with dead people—are not qualified to estimate survival chances, the State allowed prosecutors to pursue criminal charges. Unbelievably, Marsha Colbey—a few short weeks after delivering her stillborn son—found herself arrested and charged with capital murder. Alabama is among the growing list of states that make the murder of a person under the age of fourteen a capital offense punishable by the death penalty. The child-victim category resulted in a tremendous increase in the number of young mothers and juveniles who were sent to death row. All five women on Alabama’s death row were condemned for the unexplained deaths of their young children or the deaths of abusive spouses or boyfriends—all of them. In fact, nationwide, most women on death row are awaiting execution for a family crime involving an allegation of child abuse or domestic violence involving a male partner. At trial, Kathleen Enstice testified that Timothy was born alive and had died by drowning. She testified that her conclusion of a live birth was a “diagnosis of exclusion”—that is, she could not find evidence that the baby was stillborn and did not have another explanation for his death. Her testimony was exposed as unreliable by the State’s own expert witness, Dr. Dennis McNally, an obstetrician/gynecologist who examined Mrs. Colbey two weeks after the stillbirth. Dr. McNally testified that Mrs. Colbey’s pregnancy was at high risk for “unexplained fetal death” because of her age and lack of prenatal care.

• From The Best American Erotica 2001 (2001)

  pulled at her cunt. When I sensed she was finally about to come, I slid down and jabbed my tongue up into her slick hole as far as I could. She let out a guttural shriek and went off like a Roman candle. She was one of the women who insisted on giving me her phone number. The door opened, and someone came in and loosened my blindfold. I found myself looking up at Amira. “How’s the man of the hour?” she asked. “The gang wants to know how you’re holding up. Jennifer Chase wants me to tell you she’s going to have to reconsider her entire worldview because of this.” I smiled at her and sat up. “My face is sticky, my neck is stiff, and my tongue and jaw are exhausted. Other than that I’m great.” “I thought you might be working up a thirst,” she said, holding out a cup of beer. I took the cup gratefully and downed it in one long, deli cious gulp. “God, I needed that.” She chuckled, her teeth showing white against her dark skin. “Ready to get back to it?” “Actually, I think I’ve had enough.” “Aw, too bad. I guess I’m too late, then.” “I didn’t realize you were here as a customer,” I said, looking at her with new interest. Amira was one of those women who are all curves, and she looked too young to be in law school. Dark, arched eyebrows over liquid brown eyes, full red lips, a round face framed by thick wavy hair. Full breasts, round hips and thighs, but a surprisingly narrow waist. My cock, which had been up and down all night, began hardening again. She sat down next to me, and said, “Steve, I just wanted to say that you’ve got a lot of guts acting out your fantasy like this.” “You think so?” She dropped her eyes, and said, “Please don’t tell anyone, but I have a similar fantasy. Like the girl at the fraternity the other night.” “You want to be train fucked? You’re kidding!” The idea of sweet, quiet Amira taking on a whole fraternity seemed be yond crazy, and I couldn’t help laughing. “It’s just a fantasy,” she protested. “That doesn’t actually mean I’m going to do it.” “So you don’t think you’ll ever go through with it?” She shook her head. “No way. For me, a fantasy like that should just be a fantasy. Besides, I’m a virgin, and I won’t lose my virginity until I’m married.” She smiled at the surprise on my face. “It’s a religious thing. I choose to honor it, but I also choose to use a very narrow definition of virginity.” “Ah, I see what you mean. Would you like to be my ca boose, then?”

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I suppose it was inevitable that it would be a film, that this swaying, powerful chef, with all his virile elegance, would be doing something with these common little waiters. I was surprised to remember that Charles had told me there was no dining at Wicks’s on a Sunday evening. But I was staggered to think that he—and Staines—could actually lure the staff elsewhere and make them act out those fantasies which they must have fathered in sly glances over their fatty beef, soapy veg and boiled school puddings. What bizarre transactions and transitions must have taken place. The whole thing had that achieved bizarrerie which made it normal to the participants, demonic to the outsider. Staines’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘It’s the very last bit, dear,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be the most wonderful film ever. We’ve been doing it for months now—a cast of tens … I thought you’d like to see us polish it off in this sensationally sensational scene.’ ‘I don’t know,’ I hesitated. The backdrop, cracked in places where it had been rolled up, took on an air of redundant charm as the lights were switched on, isolating an area of tawdry small-ness in which the action was clearly to unfold. Aldo grew confidential. ‘Is very old-fashion,’ he explained. ‘I am in another part, in the garden. There I met the young milordo, and we do all sort of thing, and up a ladder too. Now he is on holiday, and the servant is left—just Derek and Raymond and Abdul.’ Aldo fluttered his lashes at me, restoring an illusion of gentility, as if we had been discussing the new vicar, and whether or not he favoured the Series III communion. I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t wondered what it would be like to make a porn film. I had cast my own on parched, electric mornings after, putting the boys through their paces; but those were unstable little loops, that oxidised and decomposed in the light of day. I wasn’t sure it would be possible to watch these acts, fearing to be aroused, fearing not to be. Charles laid his hand on my forearm. ‘Isn’t our chef a splendid fellow? He’s devoted to me, you know. Utterly devoted.’ The camera had not yet begun to run, but Abdul, seemingly careless of whether or not he started, strolled back on to the set. He wore a sumptuous calf-length fur coat, and, as one saw when he sat back on the bed and it fell open, nothing else.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  So before my freshman year started, I told Mom that I’d live with her so long as I could stay in Middletown’s schools and see Mamaw whenever I wanted. She said something about needing to transfer to a Dayton school after my freshman year, but I figured we’d cross that bridge in a year, when we had to. Living with Mom and Matt was like having a front-row seat to the end of the world. The fighting was relatively normal by my standards (and Mom’s), but I’m sure poor Matt kept asking himself how and when he’d hopped the express train to crazy town. It was just the three of us in that house, and it was clear to all that it wouldn’t work out. It was only a matter of time. Matt was a nice guy, and as Lindsay and I joked, nice guys never survived their encounters with our family. Given the state of Mom and Matt’s relationship, I was surprised when I came home from school one day early during my sophomore year and Mom announced that she was getting married. Perhaps, I thought, things weren’t quite as bad as I expected. “I honestly thought you and Matt were going to break up,” I said. “You fight every day.” “Well,” she replied, “I’m not getting married to him.” It was a story that even I found incredible. Mom had been working as a nurse at a local dialysis center, a job she’d held for a few months. Her boss, about ten years her senior, asked her out to dinner one night. She obliged, and with her relationship in shambles, she agreed to marry him a week later. She told me on a Thursday. On Saturday we moved into Ken’s house. His home was my fourth in two years. Ken was born in Korea but raised by an American veteran and his wife. During that first week in his house, I decided to inspect his small greenhouse and stumbled upon a relatively mature marijuana plant. I told Mom, who told Ken, and by the end of the day it had been replaced with a tomato plant. When I confronted Ken, he stammered a bit and finally said, “It’s for medicinal purposes, don’t worry about it.” Ken’s three children—a young girl and two boys about the same age I was—found the new arrangement as strange as I did. The oldest boy fought constantly with Mom, which—thanks to the Appalachian honor code—meant that he fought constantly with me. Shortly before I went to bed one night, I came downstairs just as he called her a bitch. No self-respecting hillbilly could stand idly by, so I made it abundantly clear that I meant to beat my new stepbrother to within an inch of his life. So unquenchable was my appetite for violence that night that Mom and Ken decided that my new stepbrother and I should be separated. I wasn’t even particularly angry.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  The shock came towards the end, when I asked him how long he'd suffered from asthma, and if he knew why he had it, a two-part question which I felt was unwise with a beginner, it might fluster him and only one half would get answered. He looked away and I saw a change in the colour of his unhappiness. "Yes, I can tell why," he said. "And when." I didn't quite make the story out at first, I was chivvying him and making him repeat words without knowing I was taking him back, like some kinder and wiser analyst, to the scene of a childhood tragedy. It turned out he had been shopping in the town with his mother: he was only six, it was ten years ago, in the summer. They had gone into a florist's and were waiting to be served, when he saw a bee hovering around his mother's shopping-basket. He knew she mustn't be stung by a bee, but she was talking to a friend and she told him not to interrupt. He tried to flap it away, but only frightened it, and as his mother turned to him it flew up and stung her in the face. She groped for the antidote in her handbag, but she'd brought the wrong bag. She fell to the floor in front of Marcel, and within a minute she was dead. His asthma had started a few months later, and was triggered especially by flowers. There was a sort of pride in his possession of these facts. He said that his father loved flowers, but had never had them in the house since. I asked, with what was clearly a suspicious sweetness, what it was his father did; and learned that he was the keeper of the little museum of Orst's paintings, out on an edge of town I hadn't visited, but where five or six old windmills had been renovated on top of a high dike. Marcel said firmly that he did not like Orst's work. I drank quite a bit in my room, tippling through my litre of duty-free Cap and Badge, and went out about eleven to the Bar Biff, a club in the basement of a house right next to the Cathedral. The unwary or short-sighted pilgrim might easily have mistaken it for the entrance to the Crypt (10th Century) and the shrine of St Ernest. The street outside was almost deserted, with an occasional late walker or pair of denim-jacketed boys pausing to peer through the locked grilles of electrical shops. Warm, too, with a scent from the trees that seemed to insist again on a last frail summery possibility.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Since the book came out, I’ve traveled to places I never expected to go, spoken to thousands of strangers about my life story, met with a couple of former presidents, appeared on national TV, and, most important, had a baby (well, my wife did the hard part; I just watched). How do you possibly summarize all of these experiences in a brief conversation? As a person who partially makes his living with the written and spoken word, I’m always a little disappointed at the answer that always comes to mind, but I offer it anyway. “Well, it’s been pretty damn weird.” When I decided to write Hillbilly Elegy , I wanted to answer two questions that had bothered me since my first days as a student at Yale Law School: Why does this elite institution seem so culturally foreign? And relatedly, why are so few kids who grow up the way I did—“disadvantaged,” to use the vocabulary of the day—making it to our society’s elite institutions. The book I wrote is an effort to answer that question in in credibly personal ways, and as I often tell people, I was initially uncomfortable with that. Indeed, even the process of finding endorsers—part of which forced me to send the book to strangers—made me want to gag. But I wrote the book the way I did because I thought it would make my argument more compelling—that if people experienced these problems through the perspectives of real people, they might appreciate their complexity. Hillbilly Elegy ’s reception makes me think this was a wise decision. Interestingly, many of the family members I interviewed had an analogous reaction. “I was pretty open with you,” one of them explained, “because I didn’t think anyone would read it. Who’d want to hear our family story?” Judging by the largely positive reception, it turns out that many people did. Admittedly, “largely positive” is not the same as “completely positive,” and my book has its fair share of critics. It’s conventional for people to say they were surprised by criticism, but I wasn’t. I was definitely surprised that many people read the book—our initial print run was ten thousand copies, and we’re approaching two million now—but I knew that if the book was successful, there would eventually be blowback. With a few exceptions, I’ve tried to avoid commenting on those reactions. A respected social scientist once told me that a book is like a baby. Eventually it leaves the house and you can’t control the way people interact with it. But I’ve also found that critics occasionally react to the book in contradictory ways. If I haven’t been surprised by the fact of criticism, I have occasionally been confused by that conflict.

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

  I continued for another mile until the forest began to give way to trailers, a few small homes, and finally, an entire community hidden away in the woods. We pulled up a hill until we reached a trailer that was glowing in the darkness, lit by a fire burning in a barrel out front. Six or seven small children were playing outside; they dashed into the trailer when they saw our car pull up. As we got out of the car, a tall man emerged from the trailer. He walked up to us and hugged Minnie and Jackie before shaking my hand. “They been waiting for you,” he told me. “I know you probably got a lot of work to do, but we appreciate you coming to meet with us. I’m Giles, Walter’s nephew.” Giles led me to the trailer and opened the door for me to step inside. The small home was packed with more than thirty people, whose chattering fell silent when I walked in. I was startled by the size of the group, which stared at me appraisingly and then, one by one, started to smile at me. Then, to my amazement, the room broke into loud applause. I was stunned by the gesture. No one had ever applauded me just for showing up. There were older women, younger women, men Walter’s age, and several men much older. Their faces were creased with a by-now familiar look of anxiety. When the applause had died down, I began to speak. “Thank you, that’s very kind,” I started. “I’m so glad to meet you all. Mr. McMillian told me he had a large family, but I didn’t expect so many of you to be here. I saw him today, and he wants me to pass along his thanks and his gratitude to all of you for sticking by him. I hope you know how much your support means. He has to wake up on death row every morning, and that’s not easy. But he knows he’s not alone. He talks about you all the time.” “Sit down, Mr. Stevenson,” someone shouted. I took a seat on an empty couch that seemed to have been reserved for me and Minnie sat down beside me. Everyone else stood, facing me. “We don’t have any money. We gave it all to the first lawyer,” called out one of the men. “I understand that, and I won’t take a penny. I work for a nonprofit law office, and we provide legal assistance at no cost to the people we represent,” I replied. “Well, how do you pay the bills?” asked one young woman. People laughed at the question. “We get donations from foundations and people who support our work.” “Well, you get Johnny D home, and I’ll make all kinds of donations,” said another woman slyly.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. l. 1) The Evangelist adds, from Jerusalem: for there had been the greatest display of miracles, and there the people were in the worst state, seeing the strongest proofs of His divinity, and yet willing to give up all to the judgment of their corrupt rulers. Was it not a great miracle, that those who raged for His life, now that they had Him in their grasp, became on a sudden quiet? AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxxi. 1) So, not fully understanding Christ’s power, they supposed that it was owing to the knowledge of the rulers that He was spared: Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ? CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. l. 1) But they do not follow the opinion of the rulers, but put forth another most perverse and absurd one; Howbeit we know this Man, whence He is; but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence He is. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xxxi. s. 2) This notion did not arise without foundation. We find indeed that the Scriptures said of Christ, He shall be called a Nazarene, (Matt. 2:23) and thus predicted whence He would come. And the Jews again told Herod, when he enquired, that Christ would be born in Bethlehem of Judah, and adduced the testimony of the Prophet. How then did this notion of the Jews arise, that, when Christ came, no one would know whence He was? From this reason, viz. that the Scriptures asserted both. As man, they foretold whence Christ would be; as God, He was hid from the profane, but revealed Himself to the godly. This notion they had taken from Isaiah, Who shall declare His generation? (Isa. 53) Our Lord replies, that they both knew Him, and knew Him not: Then cried Jesus in the temple as He taught, saying, Ye both know Me, and know whence I am: that is to say, Ye both know whence I am, and do not know whence I am: ye know whence I am, that I am Jesus of Nazareth, whose parents ye know. The birth from the Virgin was the only part of the matter unknown to them: with this exception, they knew all that pertained to Jesus as man. So He well says, Ye both know Me, and know whence I am: i. e. according to the flesh, and the likeness of man. But in respect of His divinity, He says, I am not come of Myself, but He that sent Me is true.

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

  I said to myself, ‘What the hell is wrong with him? Why does he keep talking about “mitigation” like that?’ When I got home I looked it up. I wasn’t sure what you meant at first, but now I do.” I laughed. “Sometimes I get going in court, and I’m not sure I know what I’m saying, either.” “Well, I think you done good, real good.” He looked me in the eye before he extended his hand. We shook hands and I started toward the door again. I was just about inside when he grabbed my arm again. “Oh, wait. I’ve got to tell you something else. Listen, I did something I probably wasn’t supposed to do, but I want you to know about it. On the trip back down here after court on that last day—well, I know how Avery is, you know. Well anyway, I just want you to know that I took an exit off the interstate on the way back. And, well, I took him to a Wendy’s, and I bought him a chocolate milkshake.” I stared at him incredulously, and he broke into a chuckle. Then he locked me inside the room. I was so stunned by what the officer said, I didn’t hear the other officer bring Avery into the room. When I realized Avery was already in the room, I turned and greeted him. When he didn’t say anything, I was a little alarmed. “Are you okay?” “Yes, sir, I’m fine. Are you okay?” he asked. “Yes, Avery, I’m really doing well.” I waited for our ritual to begin. When he didn’t say anything, I figured I’d just play my part. “Look, I tried to bring you a chocolate milkshake, but they wouldn’t—” Avery cut me off. “Oh, I got a milkshake. I’m okay now.” As I began discussing the hearing, he grinned. We talked for an hour before I had to see another client. Avery never again asked me for a chocolate milkshake. We won a new trial for him and ultimately got him off death row and into a facility where he could receive mental health treatment. I never saw the officer again; someone told me he quit not long after that last time I saw him. I Chapter Eleven I’ll Fly Away t was the third bomb threat in two months. As we quickly cleared the office and waited for the police to arrive, the entire staff was nervous. We now had five attorneys, an investigator, and three administrative staff members. Law students had started arriving for short-term internships, which provided us with additional legal assistance and critically needed investigative help. But none of them had signed on for bomb threats.

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

  693. And if someone raises the objection that error sometimes arises even with regard to proper sensibles, his answer is that this is attributable not to the senses but to the imagination; for when the imagination is subject to some sort of abnormality, it sometimes happens that the object apprehended by a sense enters the imagination in a different way than it was apprehended by the sense. This is evident, for example, in the case of madmen, in whom the organ of imagination has been injured. 694. Second, that it is (370). Then he gives his second argument, and it runs thus: it is surprising if some “ should raise the question, ” or “ be puzzled, ” as another text says, whether continuous quantities are such as they appear to those who are at a distance or to those who are close at hand. For it is just about self-evidently true that a sense judges quantities which are close at hand to be such as they are, and those which are far away to be smaller than they are, because what seems farther away appears small, as is proved in the science of optics. 695. The same thing applies if someone raises the question whether colors are such as they appear to those who are close at hand; for it is evident that the farther an agent ’ s power is extended when it acts, the more imperfect is its effect; for fire heats those things which are far away to a lesser degree than those which are close at hand. And for the same reason the color of a perfect sensible body does not change that part of the transparent medium which is far away from it as completely as it changes that part which is close to it. Hence the judgment of a sense is truer about sensible colors in things close at hand than it is about those in things far away. 696. The same thing is also true if someone asks whether things are such as they appear to those who are healthy or “ to those who are ailing, ” i.e., those who are ill. For healthy people have sensory organs which are well disposed, and therefore the forms of sensible things are received in them just as they are; and for this reason the judgment which healthy people make about sensible objects is a true one. But the organs of sick people are not properly disposed, and therefore they are not changed as they should be by sensible objects. Hence their judgment about such objects is not a true one. This is clear with regard to the sense of taste; for when the organ of taste in sick people has been rendered inoperative as a result of the humors being destroyed, things which have a good taste seem tasteless to them.

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

  We were admitted through several secure metal doors into the large room that served as the visitation area. It was typical: There were vending machines against the back walls and small rectangular tables where inmates could meet with family members. The familiarity of the setting did little to calm us. Michael and I put our notepads and pens on one of the tables and then paced around the room, waiting for Myers. When Myers walked into the visitation area, I was surprised at how old he seemed. His hair was almost completely gray, which made him seem frail and vulnerable. He was also shorter with a much smaller body frame than I was expecting. His testimony had caused so much anguish for Walter and his family that I had created a larger-than-life image of him. He walked toward us but stopped short when he saw Michael and nervously blurted out, “Who is he? You didn’t tell me you were bringing anybody with you.” Myers had a thick Southern accent. Up close, his scars made him appear more sympathetic than menacing or villainous. “This is Michael O’Connor. He’s a lawyer in my office working with me on this case. Michael is just helping me investigate this case.” “Well, people told me I could trust you. I don’t know anything about him.” “I promise, he’s fine.” I glanced over at Michael, who was trying his best to look trustworthy, before turning back to Myers. “Please have a seat.” He looked at Michael skeptically and then slowly sat down. My plan was to try to ease him into the conversation by letting him know that we just wanted the truth. But before I could say anything, Myers blurted out a full recantation of his trial testimony. “I lied. Everything I said at McMillian’s trial was a lie. I’ve lost a lot of sleep and have been in a lot of pain over this. I can’t be quiet any longer.” “The testimony you gave at trial against Walter McMillian was a lie?” I asked cautiously. My heart was pounding, but I tried to stay as steady as I could. I was afraid that if I seemed too eager or too surprised—too anything—he might retreat. “It was all a lie. What I’m going to tell you is going to blow your mind, Mr. Stevenson.” He held his stare on me dramatically before turning to Michael. “You, too, Jimmy Connors.” It didn’t take many conversations with Ralph before it became clear that he had difficulty remembering names. “Mr. Myers, you know I’m going to want you to not only tell me the truth but also tell the court the truth. Are you willing to do that?” I was nervous to push so quickly, but I needed to be clear.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  People have complex motives for wanting to be heard, and we were presented with a wide spectrum of life histories, including some far worse than I had ever seen among divorced families. Carol Kincaid and I sat in the breakfast nook of her tiny home with a side patio and garden overlooking a creek in San Mateo. Carol has a good eye for design, so the space felt colorful and warm. She served tea and butter cookies on Italian majolica set against a dark red tablecloth, with flowers arranged in the middle of the table. The ambience struck me as peaceful, calm, and comfortable until, minutes into our interview, I discovered that Carol’s story is one of the most harrowing tales I have ever heard about growing up in an intact family. In decades of working with divorcing families, I have rarely encountered worse situations than those described by this pale, blue-eyed, forty- year-old woman who works as a buyer for a major department store in downtown San Francisco. Carol handed me the cookie platter and asked with a gracious smile, “Where would you like me to begin?” I always begin with an open-ended question so that the person I am interviewing will feel free to guide me in understanding the past and present. I simply said, “Carol, I’m interested in what it was like growing up in your family. What do you remember about being a child and a teenager?” Her expression hardened. “Let me put it straight. I come from a family where children were not the center of anyone’s interest. My mother’s favorite statement, which I heard many times and continue to hear in my head, was ‘I’m the mother and I can do anything I want!’” “What does that mean?” “Well, let me tell you what life was like in our house. Every day at five o’clock sharp my parents sat down for cocktail hour. My brother, Steve, and my sister, Claire, and I always had to be home at five so Mom could get things ready. If we were doing errands and even when we were away on trips, we had to be back by five so they could start drinking.” “Why did they want you home?” I thought this was an odd demand to make of children. “It was part of the ritual.” Carol fought to keep her voice steady, unemotional. “I still remember Mom saying ‘only alcoholics drink before five,’ though she’d start to get edgy at four. At home, Mom would take a shower and change and put on perfume. She’d take out the pitcher and the shaker and the ice and put them on the coffee table.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  The first time I got Larry on the phone, he was reluctant to talk, explaining that he was far too busy with a new project at work. Life at home, with a three-year-old and new baby on the way, was just too hectic. He was polite: thanks (for calling) but no thanks (for catching up on his life). I wasn’t at all surprised. There was nothing in Larry’s past that he should want to revisit. I decided that the only way to win Larry over was to tell him straight why it was so important that we meet: “Look, I don’t want to talk to you about the distant past. That’s long gone. But I do want to find out what happened to you after you decided to change your life. It would be very useful for other young people to know what worked for you and what didn’t, where the minefields were, where you compromised and where you succeeded most. They have nowhere else they can find out.” Larry was dead silent. Apparently I had struck a nerve. As he hesitated I reminded him of something he had said ten years earlier. “Larry, you once told me, ‘When I decide to marry, it will be until the day I die.’ Do you still feel that way?” “You remember that?” He was genuinely surprised. “How could you?” “Larry, I remember most of what you’ve told me. That’s my job. I’ll meet you anywhere, anytime, at your convenience. Because your experience is important.” A week later we met in the San Jose office that Larry shared with two other structural engineers. He came straight out to greet me, shook hands, and led me into his office. He had a stocky build, short brown hair, direct blue eyes, and a somewhat harried look about him. His office was thickly cluttered with blueprints, government reports, periodicals, newspapers, and countless stacks of loose papers. Larry grabbed a set of blueprints off a chair near his desk so I could sit down and then brought his chair around so that the desk didn’t separate us. I looked around admiringly at the professional surroundings. “You’ve come a long way. Congratulations!” “You mean since the first time we met? I was what, about seven?” He laughed. “That’s exactly how old you were.” “Those were not good years. I was a brat.” “You were a very unhappy brat.” “You’re right. I was a pretty miserable brat for a long time.” Larry looked around his office. “Lots of times I can’t believe that I’m sitting here.” He relaxed a little and smiled. “Do all the kids in your study agree to see you twenty-five years later?” “Since you’re an engineer, I’ll give you the numbers. So far, one hundred percent.” “What will you do with your conclusions?” “Publish them for people to read. If you want, you’ll be among the first to see them. I promise to send you a copy.” “Will anyone be able to recognize me?”