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 Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  I followed a duty-nurse down the long anonymous green corridors whose oil-painted walls exuded an atmosphere of damp. The white phosphorescent bulbs which punctuated our progress wallowed in the gloom like swollen glow-worms. They had put him in the little ward with the single curtained bed which was, as I afterwards learned from Mnemjian, reserved for critical cases whose expectation of life was short. He did not see me at first, for he was watching with an air of shocked exhaustion while a nurse disposed his pillows for him. I was amazed at the masterful, thoughtful reserve of the face which stared up from the mattress, for he had become so thin as almost to be unrecognizable. The flesh had sunk down upon his cheek-bones exposing the long slightly curved nose to its very roots and throwing into relief the carved nostrils. This gave the whole mouth and jaw a buoyancy, a spirit which must have characterized his face in earliest youth. His eyes looked bruised with fever and a dark stubble shaded his neck and throat, but under this the exposed lines of the face were as clean as those of the face of a man of thirty. The images of him which I had so long held in my memory — a sweaty porcupine, a tame seal — were immediately dissolved and replaced by this new face, this new man who looked like one of the beasts of the Apocalypse. I stood for a long minute in astonishment watching an unknown personage accepting the ministration of the nurses with a dazed and regal exhaustion. The duty-nurse was whispering in my ear: ‘It is good you have come. Nobody will come and see him. He is delirious at times. Then he wakes and asks for people. You are a relation?’ ‘A business associate’ I said. ‘It will do him good to see a face he knows.’

• From My People (2022)

  There was a boy in the class, too, a Texan, who eagerly jumped at any opportunity to sing the praises of his native state and of Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House—and, of course, a Texan. The two years between the time when Hamp and I first applied and our eventual admittance to the campus at Athens were filled with official excuses and delays, legal hearings and conferences, rumors and counter rumors in the press and elsewhere. The net result always seemed to be to push us further from our goal. So I had enrolled at Wayne State in Detroit to begin working toward the journalism major which the University of Georgia still denied me. Hamp enrolled at Morehouse and began his pre-med work there. As the lawyers argued back and forth and we became “temporary” students on our own respective campuses, there were times when I myself began to doubt that I would ever get my degree from Georgia rather than Wayne. So it was on the afternoon of January 6, 1961, when I rushed into the dormitory at Wayne, grabbed my mail, and ran up to my room on the second floor, my only concern was getting into something comfortable before going to sorority meeting at five o’clock. I had not been in my room ten minutes before I was called to answer the phone out in the hall. Expecting to hear one of my friends on the other end, I was surprised to hear instead an unfamiliar voice saying, “Congratulations!” “For what?” I asked, completely in the dark. The woman on the other end identified herself as a reporter for a New York paper. She told me that news had just come over the wires that Federal Judge [William] Bootle had ordered Hamp and me admitted to the University of Georgia. By the time she managed to read the entire release to me, both of us were between laughter and tears. My caller brought both of us back to reality by pointing out that she had a story to write. From that moment on there was no possibility of a moment of calm and quiet in which I could think about what was ahead. Downstairs the switchboard operator was soon swamped by calls. I grew even more confused as reporters seemed to be arriving by the carload. In a way it was a relief to break away and rush off to sorority meeting. I arrived, bubbling over with elation, and began eagerly sharing the long-awaited news with my Delta sisters. But I found their reaction rather puzzling. Instead of sharing in my jubilation, they became quiet and solemn. It was not until thirty-six hours later, as I sat on the plane to Atlanta, that I began to realize what they had already seen. As I looked around the plane, wishing for someone with whom I could share my happiness, all the faces I saw were cold and unfamiliar.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  He now rose quickly and opened the door. There was nobody outside. He opened the window. There was no one standing on the sill. He placed the tea-cosy over the desk telephone and reseated himself. Then, leaning forward and speaking carefully, he rolled his glass eye at me as with a conspiratorial solemnity he said: ‘Not a word to anyone, old man. Swear you won’t say a word’. I swore. ‘They’ve made me head of the Secret Service.’ The words fairly whistled in his dentures. I nodded in amazement. He drew a deep sucking breath as if he had been delivered of a weight and went on. ‘Old boy, there’s going to be a war. Inside information.’ He pointed a long finger at his own temple. ‘There’s going to be a war. The enemy is working night and day, old boy, right here among us.’ I could not dispute this. I could only marvel at the new Scobie who confronted me like a bad magazine illustration. ‘You can help us scupper them, old man’ he went on with a devastating air of authority. ‘We want to take you on our strength.’ This sounded most agreeable. I waited for details. ‘The most dangerous gang of all is right here, in Alexandria’ the old man creaked and boomed, ‘and you are in the centre of it. All friends of yours.’ I saw through the knotted eyebrows and the rolling excited eye the sudden picture of Nessim, a brief flash, as of intuition, sitting at his huge desk in the cold steel-tube offices watching a telephone ring while the beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He was expecting a message about Justine — one more twist of the knife. Scobie shook his head. ‘Not him so much’ he said. ‘He’s in it, of course. The leader is a man called Balthazar. Look what the censorship have been picking up.’ He extracted a card from a file and passed it to me. Balthazar writes an exquisite hand and the writing was obviously his; but I could not help smiling when I saw that the reverse of the postcard contained only the little chessboard diagram of the boustrophedon. Greek letters filled up the little squares. ‘He’s got so much damn cheek he sends them through the open post.’ I studied the diagram and tried to remember the little I had learned from my friend of the calculus. ‘It’s a nine-power system. I can’t read this one’ I said. Scobie added breathlessly: ‘They have regular meetings, old man, to pool information. We know this for a fact.’ I held the postcard lightly in my fingers and seemed to hear the voice of Balthazar saying: ‘The thinker’s job is to be suggestive: that of the saint to be silent about his discovery.’

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  The room was busy—perhaps twenty couples stood in loose lines, practicing the East Coast swing under the tutelage of Tomas, the studio’s stately Brazilian owner. Every Sunday evening, Tomas held a group lesson that morphed into a social dance—he called it a practice party. Tomas manned the music system, announcing with each song, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a foxtrot!” or, “Next up, let’s rumba!” Students asked each other to dance. As they practiced their steps, instructors circulated, dispensing guidance and adjusting posture—a hand on a shoulder here, a raising of the chin there. In the four years since taking up ballroom dancing, Jim, fifty-six, with the trim build of a runner and neatly cropped red hair that reflects his Irish ancestry, had become a regular. That evening, as the last notes to Harry Connick Jr.’s “A Wink and a Smile” wound down and couples slowed their foxtrots, Tomas leaned into the microphone. With a gleam in his eye, he asked, “Okay, can everyone clear the floor except Mayumi, please?” Jim was puzzled—Tomas usually linked the songs one after another to keep everyone out on the floor. But tonight something was different. Mayumi was Jim’s instructor, so he clapped politely, then turned and headed for a folding chair. But Tomas continued, “We have a surprise performance for you all tonight—a birthday dance!” Jim froze. Today was his birthday. How on earth did they know? He hadn’t told anyone. He turned back to the dance floor and looked past the dozens of people. In an otherwise empty circle of onlookers stood Mayumi, a smile on her face, her hand outstretched toward him. * * * What a difference time and practice make. Four years previously, never in his wildest dreams would Jim have imagined himself at any kind of party, much less a dance party where he approached women, busted out a cha-cha, and did it all surrounded by mirrors and dozens of others. Jim grew up in the sixties and seventies in the Irish-Catholic section of Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood in the heart of Boston. Jim’s father, a calm and even-keeled man, worked as a groundskeeper at Harvard for thirty years; Jim’s mother was a secretary for an insurance company. Jim and his kid brother, Ryan, grew up on the second floor of what in Boston is known as a triple-decker, their apartment sandwiched between two identical others, fronted by a stoop of wooden stairs. After school, Jim and Ryan roamed the streets with the neighbor kids, many of whom were their cousins. Except when winter snowdrifts clogged the streets, the boys would play street hockey, lobbing friendly insults and taking turns fishing the puck from under boat-sized cars with vinyl roofs. Between games, they trooped back and forth to the variety store on the corner, using the change from running errands for Mom to purchase their near-daily installments of Mountain Dew and Twinkies.

• From Less (2017)

  From the stands: his mother’s ecstatic cry. From his bag in Piemonte: the famous rubber bands uncoiled for the famous childhood hero. From the cabin’s doorway: the sea horse lady bursting in, opening windows to let out the smoke from Less’s botched attempt at a fire. Arthur Less was up for a prize only once before: something called the Wilde and Stein Literary Laurels. He was informed of the mysterious honor through his agent, Peter Hunt. Less, perhaps hearing “Wildenstein,” replied he wasn’t Jewish. Peter coughed and said: “I believe it is something gay.” It was, and yet Less was surprised; he had spent half a lifetime living with a writer whose sexuality was never mentioned, much less his half life as a married man. To be called a gay writer! Robert scorned the idea; it was like elevating the importance of his childhood in Westchester, Connecticut. “I don’t write about Westchester,” he would say. “I don’t think about Westchester. I’m not a Westchester poet”—which would have surprised Westchester, whose council had placed a plaque on the middle school Robert had attended. Gay, black, Jewish; Robert and his friends thought they were beyond all that. So Less was surprised to know this kind of award even existed. His first response to Peter was to ask: “How did they even know I was gay?” He asked this from his front porch, wearing a kimono. But Peter persuaded him to attend. Less and Robert had split by then, and, anxious about how he would appear to this mysterious gay literary world, and desperate for a date, he panicked and asked Freddy Pelu. Who knew Freddy, then only twenty-six, would be such a boon? They arrived to a college auditorium (banners everywhere: Hopes Are the Ladders to Dreams! ), on whose stage six wooden chairs were arranged as in a court of law. Less and Freddy took their seats. (“Wilde and Stein,” Freddy said. “It sounds like a vaudeville act.”) Around them, people were shouting recognition and hugging and having intense conversations. Less recognized none of them. It seemed so strange; here, his contemporaries, his peers, and they were strangers. But not to bookish Freddy, suddenly come alive in literary company—“Look, there’s Meredith Castle; she’s a language poet, Arthur, you should know her, and that one is Harold Frickes,” and so on. Freddy peering through his red glasses at these oddities and naming each with satisfaction. It was like being with a bird-watcher. The lights went down, and six men and women walked onstage, some of them so elderly, they seemed to be automatons, and sat in the chairs. One small bald man in tinted glasses stepped to the microphone. “That’s Finley Dwyer,” Freddy whispered. Whoever that was.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  After decades of searching, Noah Two can now complete the obituary. As surprising as Noah’s discovery seemed to me at the time, when I published his story in the Couch section of the New York Times in April 2015, neither of us expected the response it got. In the hours after the column was published I started receiving emails from people who wanted to share similar experiences. What Noah believed was his own esoteric story turned out to be the story of many people, each of whom in turn had assumed it was a cryptic and unusual thing that had happened only to them. People shared their stories of lost siblings, secrets they only uncovered later in life, and the ways those secrets showed themselves in their minds. Several wrote about discovering they had a twin who had died at birth and the impact of that trauma on their lives. Those coincidences between the secret reality and the way it appeared in their minds were often experienced as seemingly irrational, and sometimes hard to believe. All of these people were left with a powerful link between their past and their present, between a feeling that they initially couldn’t explain and family trauma. Most didn’t know how to make sense of the strange synchronicity between those family secrets and the way their minds and bodies responded to information they didn’t consciously know. I heard from a man I’ll call Benjamin, who said that for years, since he was a little boy, he had a dream in which he was buried underground. He would wake up frightened in the middle of the night and he would tell his parents that he was afraid to go back to sleep because he couldn’t breathe. His parents hoped that this dream would fade as he grew up but in fact things got worse, and at the age of thirteen Benjamin developed claustrophobia. His panic would be especially severe when he needed to take the subway. No one understood why he had developed these fears. Benjamin always knew that his mother’s family had been murdered in the Holocaust. He knew that she didn’t have her parents, grandparents, or uncles; that she had immigrated to the United States as a little girl survivor; and that she had met his father when she was sixteen years old. It was only when Benjamin was in his forties that he learned about the way his grandfather had died—he had been buried alive. His parents, unaware of the features of their emotional inheritance, had never made the connection between his nightmares and other symptoms and their family’s traumatic history. As in Rachel’s story in Chapter 4, as horrifying as it was, learning about his grandfather’s brutal death allowed Benjamin to stop experiencing and carrying that fact in his body. When our minds remember, our bodies are free to forget.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Freud viewed memory as a fluid entity that was constantly changing and being reworked over time. He referred to this dynamic as nachträglichkeit, translated into English as “afterwardness,” which means that early traumatic events are layered with new meanings throughout life. Freud was especially focused on sexual abuse as an event that would be reworked retrospectively as the child got older and reached certain developmental phases. Sexual abuse in childhood isn’t always registered by the child as traumatic. The child is overwhelmed with something they cannot process or even make sense of . As time passes, the traumatic experience is reprocessed. In every developmental phase the child will revisit the abuse from a different angle and with different understanding. When that abused child becomes a teenager and then an adult, when they have sex for the first time or have children, when their child reaches the age they were when the abuse happened—in each moment the abuse will be reprocessed from a slightly different perspective. The process of mourning keeps changing and accrues new layers of meaning. Time will not necessarily make the memory fade; instead, the memory will appear and reappear in different forms and will be experienced simultaneously as real and unreal. Nineteen years after I first met Lara, it is a gloomy day in mid-September and I’m about to meet her again. It is also my birthday. In the intervening years, I’ve had three children. I have stopped working with children and am now only seeing adults. My office is in the same neighborhood as it was nineteen years ago, in downtown Manhattan. I open my door and look at the tall young woman who stands there. I do not recognize her. “I grew up quite a bit.” She smiles as if reading my mind. “Thank you for answering my email so quickly, and for agreeing to see me. ” She sits on the couch and looks around. “I like your new office.” I recognize her smile and these first words. “Those were your exact words when I met you for the first time,” I say, trying to learn something about her from the way she looks: the black T-shirt, the black long silk skirt, her sneakers and blue nail polish, and her long straight hair, which I think used to be curly. I’m trying to read what has happened to her in the years since then. Where has she been? Is she happy? Did she find out what really happened? “I know it’s your birthday today,” she then says to my surprise. I nod and smile. Some things don’t change. She still knows more about me than I expect. “Don’t worry, I can’t read your mind,” she adds as if reading my mind. “When I tried to find you, I googled you, and one of the first things I found on your Wikipedia page was your birthday. I was happy you scheduled our session for today. I really wanted to give you a gift.”

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Disaster at the AltarPrincesses were brought up from birth to be chaste almost to the point of frigidity, thereby ensuring legitimate heirs. While virtue could be taught, beauty could not. Ambassadors, selling the goods sight unseen to a prospective royal husband, inflated the looks of the princess with hyperbolic praise, often bringing a flattering portrait as evidence. In 1540 Henry VIII was duped by the portrait trick in his search for a fourth wife. He wanted to cement an alliance with France and wrote François I asking for suggestions. François graciously replied with the names and portraits of five noble ladies. But Henry was not satisfied. “By God,” he said, studying the flat, unblinking faces on canvas, “I trust no one but myself. The thing touches me too near. I wish to see them and know them some time before deciding.”2 He wanted to hold a kind of royal beauty pageant at the English-owned town of Calais on the north coast of France where he would personally select the winner after close inspection. The French ambassador replied acidly that perhaps Henry should sleep with all five in turn and marry the best performer. François sneeringly remarked, “It is not the custom in France to send damsels of that rank and of such noble and princely families to be passed in review as if they were hackneys [whores] for sale.”3 Chastened, Henry returned to perusing portraits and decided on a Protestant alliance based on a lovely likeness of Anne of Cleves. But when the royal bridegroom met Anne he was shocked at how little resemblance there was between this hulking, pockmarked Valkyrie and the dainty, smooth-faced woman in the portrait. The king was “struck with consternation when he was shown the Queen” and had never been “so much dismayed in his life as to see a lady so far unlike what had been represented.” He roared, “I see nothing in this woman as men report of her, and I marvel that wise men would make such report as they have done.” He continued, “Whom shall men trust? I promise you I see no such thing as hath been shown me of her, by pictures and report. I am ashamed that men have praised her as they have done—and I love her not!”4 Try as he might, the king could not extricate himself from the marriage to his “Flanders mare,” as he dubbed Anne. The duchy of Cleves would be offended if Henry returned the goods. Two days before the wedding, Henry grumbled, “If it were not that she had come so far into my realm, and the great preparations and state that my people have made for her, and for fear of making a ruffle in the world and of driving her brother into the arms of the Emperor and the French King, I would not now marry her. But now it is too far gone, wherefore I am sorry.”5

• From Less (2017)

  “You see, Arlo?” the man says to the young man. “Nothing. No feelings at all! You just get over all of them. Arlo, will you take a picture?” And Less finds himself embracing this man again, this chubby stranger, and smiling for a picture that young Arlo moves to take until the man begins instructing him: “Take it again; no, take it from over there, hold the camera higher; no, higher; no, HIGHER!” “Howard,” Less says to his old lover, smiling. “You look wonderful.” “And so do you, Arthur! Of course, we didn’t know how young we were, did we? Look at both of us now, old men!” Less steps back, startled. “Well, good to see you!” Howard says, shaking his head and repeating, “Isn’t that lovely? Arthur Less, right here on Eighth Avenue. Good to see you, Arthur! You take care, we’ve got to run!” A kiss on the cheek is misaimed and lands on the history professor’s mouth; he smells of rye bread. Brief flash to six years ago, seeing his silhouette in the theater and thinking: Here is a good companion. A man he almost stayed with, almost loved, and now he does not even recognize him on the street. Either Less is an asshole, or the heart is a capricious thing. It is not impossible both are true. A wave to poor Arlo, to whom none of this is a comfort. The two are about to cross the street when Howard stops, turns back, and, with a bright expression, says: “Oh! You were a friend of Carlos Pelu, weren’t you? Isn’t it a small world! Maybe I’ll see you at the wedding?”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Finally - and most wonderfully of all - he took down a tin of tobacco from the shelf of a bookcase, rolled two neat cigarettes, and offered me one to smoke. Florence, meanwhile, sat all night a little apart from us, at the supper-table, working through a pile of papers - lists, I fondly supposed them to be, of friendless girls; account-sheets, perhaps, from Freemantle House. When we lit our cigarettes she looked up and sniffed, but made no complaint; occasionally she would sigh or yawn, or rub her neck as if it ached, and then her husband would address her with some word of encouragement or affection. Once the baby cried: she tilted her head, but didn’t stir; it was Ralph who, all ungrudgingly, rose to see to it. She simple worked on: writing, reading, comparing pages, addressing envelopes... She worked while Ralph yawned, and finally stood and stretched and touched his lips to her cheek and bade us both a polite good-night; she worked while I yawned, and began to doze. At last, at around eleven o’clock, she shuffled her papers together and passed her hand over her face. When she saw me she gave a start: I really believe that, in her industry, she had forgotten me. Now, remembering, she first blushed, then frowned. ‘I had better go up, Miss Astley,’ she said. ‘You won’t mind sleeping in here, I hope? I’m afraid there’s nowhere else for you.’ I smiled. I did not mind - though I thought there must be an empty room upstairs, and wondered, privately, why she did not put me in it. She helped me push the two armchairs together, then went to fetch a pillow, a blanket and a sheet. ‘Do you have everything you need?’ she asked then. ‘The privy is out the back, as you know. There’s a jug of clean water kept in the pantry, if you’re thirsty. Ralph will be up at six or so, and I shall follow him at seven - or earlier, if Cyril wakes me. You’ll have to leave at eight, of course, when I do.’ I nodded quickly. I wouldn’t think about the morning, just yet. There was an awkward silence. She looked so tired and ordinary I had a foolish urge to kiss her cheek good-night, as Ralph had. Of course, I did not; I only took a step towards her as she nodded to me and prepared to make her way upstairs, and said, ‘I am more grateful to you, Mrs Banner, than I can say. You have been very kind to me - you, who hardly know me; and more especially your husband, who doesn’t know me at all.’ As I spoke she turned to me, and blinked. Then she placed her hand on a chair-back, and smiled a curious smile. ‘Did you think he was my husband?’ she said.

• From Less (2017)

  No rancor at all.” Less stands and studies him: the lines on his face like origami that has been unfolded and smoothed down with your hand, the little freckles on the forehead, the white fuzz from his ears to his crown, the coppery eyes flashing with anything but rancor. Who the hell is this old man? “You see, Arlo?” the man says to the young man. “Nothing. No feelings at all! You just get over all of them. Arlo, will you take a picture?” And Less finds himself embracing this man again, this chubby stranger, and smiling for a picture that young Arlo moves to take until the man begins instructing him: “Take it again; no, take it from over there, hold the camera higher; no, higher; no, HIGHER!” “Howard,” Less says to his old lover, smiling. “You look wonderful.” “And so do you, Arthur! Of course, we didn’t know how young we were, did we? Look at both of us now, old men!” Less steps back, startled. “Well, good to see you!” Howard says, shaking his head and repeating, “Isn’t that lovely? Arthur Less, right here on Eighth Avenue. Good to see you, Arthur! You take care, we’ve got to run!” A kiss on the cheek is misaimed and lands on the history professor’s mouth; he smells of rye bread. Brief flash to six years ago, seeing his silhouette in the theater and thinking: Here is a good companion. A man he almost stayed with, almost loved, and now he does not even recognize him on the street. Either Less is an asshole, or the heart is a capricious thing. It is not impossible both are true. A wave to poor Arlo, to whom none of this is a comfort. The two are about to cross the street when Howard stops, turns back, and, with a bright expression, says: “Oh! You were a friend of Carlos Pelu, weren’t you? Isn’t it a small world! Maybe I’ll see you at the wedding?” Arthur Less did not publish until he was in his thirties. By then, he had lived with the famous poet Robert Brownburn for years in a small house—a shack, they always called it—halfway up a steep residential stairway in San Francisco. The Vulcan Steps, they’re called, curving from Levant Street at the top, down between Monterey pines, ferns, ivy, and bottlebrush trees, to a brick landing with a view east to downtown. Bougainvillea bloomed on their porch like a discarded prom dress. The “shack” was only four rooms, one of them expressly Robert’s, but they painted the walls white and hung up paintings Robert had gotten from friends (one of them of an almost-identifiable Less, nude, on a rock), and planted a seedling trumpet vine below the bedroom window. It took five years for Less to take Robert’s advice and write. Just labored short stories at first. And then, almost at the end of their lives together, a novel.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  It was incidental to the event at Antioch, but from the point of view from which Paul introduced the matter here, a matter of primary importance that on this occasion more decisively than ever before he declared his independence of Jerusalem and her apostles. The oldest and most trustworthy mss. are divided between ody and ody before ’IovSaixc, the former being the reading of N*ACP 31, 33, the latter that of N*eBD* and a few cursives. D> et eFGKeilL and most of the cursives read ox. WH., adopting ox with the margin: “ody MSS.” apparently judge that ody is a primitive error and odyt a derivative from it. But the grounds of this decision are not easy to discover. In view of Acts 27 Rom. 327, odyf can not be judged to be impossible, and in view of its strong attestation is probably to be accepted as the original reading, of which ody is a corruption arising from the accidental omission of one t, or from the substitution of the more familiar for the less familiar form. Ils used as here in the sense of “how is it that,’ nearly equivalent to “why,” expressing surprise or displeasure, is of not uncommon occurrence both in classical and biblical writers. See Hom. JI. IV 26; Aesch. Pers. 798; Soph. El. 407; Mt. 22 Jn. 4° Acts 28, etc. My isr4 II5 *Avayxatets is undoubtedly conative, referring not to an accomplished result, but to the intention or tendency of Peter’s action. BMT 11. *Toudatterv, “to follow the Jewish way of life”; 7. ¢., to observe the Jewish law, occurs in the same sense in the Lxx of Esth. 817: xat roAAor tay eOvav meptetéuvovto xat tovddcitoy dik tov obGov tHy "loudatwy, in Ignat. Mag. 10%: &tonév éotty "Insoty Xototdy AaAciv xar toudatterv, and in Ev. Nic. 2; Plut. Cic. 73. In the sense “to favour the Jews,” it is found in Jos. Bell. 2. 463 (18°). *Toudsatos bx&exwyv, standing in opposition to éOvixds Cfic, is conces- sive. The view of Ltft. that Sxéexywy has reference to the original, natural state, being nearly equivalent to gicet éy, is but slenderly supported by evidence. Certainly this is not the invariable force of bxéeyw in N.T. Cf. chap. 144 Acts 23° 44, etc. The term é0vtx@s occurs here only in Bib. Gr.; elsewhere only in later writers; cf. é0vixds, Mt. 547 67 1817 3 Jn. 7. “Ioudaixeéss occurs here only in Bib. Gr.; elsewhere in Jos. Bell. 6. 17 (1°); cf. ’Ioudaixés, Tit. 14 2 Mac. 13%; Jos. Amt. 20. 258 (111). On the meaning of Cf, see note on Géw, p.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  In 1717, et te yao yeweyds fy ttc . . . meoAnugBels [sc. atovidip xat dxpocdoxntw gbby—cf. v.'5] thy dSuckAuxtoy kuevev Waly a5 329 d&v&yxny, it means “to overtake,” “to come upon,” or “to take un- awares”’ (not, however, “‘to detect’). See also Jos. Bell. 5.79 (24): 3d xat tote noodngbévtes of “Pwyator tats euBodratc elxov (cited by Sief.), where the passive clearly means “to be taken by surprise.” In N. T. it occurs in 1 Cor. 11%, where it means “to take beforehand”’; in Mk. 148, where it means “to anticipate, to forestall” (cf. also Ign. Eph. 32, the only instance in Patr. Ap.); and in the present passage, for which no meaning is so probable as that which is vouched for Wisd. 1717; Jos. Bell. 5.79 (24), viz., ‘‘to take by surprise,” “to seize unawares”’ (so Sief.)* If the word “overtake” be employed in translation it should be understood in that sense. The meaning ‘“‘to detect, to dis- cover one in an act” (Ell. Alf. Ltft. Th. and not a few others), though not an improbable derivative from the meaning ‘‘to take by surprise,” is not attested by any observed instance and is not required by this context. When with this interpretation of xeoA. is combined the view that xaé throws its emphasis on xeoA., giving the meaning, “If one be even detected in a fault, etc.,” it yields a thought wholly inharmonious with the context. See above on et xat. Tlao&rtwya, a late word meaning literally “a fall beside,’’ but used by Polybius, in whom the first observed instances occur, in a figurative sense, ‘‘a false step, a blunder,” is used in the Lxx for various words meaning ‘‘sin,’’ and with similar force in Apocr. In N. T. it is used in the synoptic gospels in speaking of forgiveness, and in the Pauline epistles, Rom. 425 51% 18, etc. Between biblical and non-biblical usage there seems little difference, except that in the biblical writers it has a more strictly ethical sense. The exx. in Paul show that the word retained for him the suggestion of its etymological sense, “a falling beside, a failure to achieve” (see esp. Rom. 11" ), and it is, therefore, probable that in the present passage there is an intended antithesis to ctoryouev “walk in a straight line, conform to a standard.” év is figuratively spatial, meaning “in the midst of,” “in the act of.” Cf. 1 Thes. 2? and Th. s. v. I. 5. Ot xvevwattxol here evidently refers to those who in obedience to the instructions of vv.16-26, live by the Spirit, walk by the Spirit, as against those who, failing to do so, are still following the éxOupla ths saexds (of. 1 Cor. 31: obx AduvHOny AcAtjoat duty ws Tvevpatinots &AN’ ws sapxtyotc), or as against both the latter and those who are living ix vouoy (cf.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  3 1% 1 Rom. 320 21a, etc.). The word 6éAere in the appended relative clause expresses forcibly the inclination of the Galatians to abandon the Pauline gospel. Cf. @édovTes, v.2. AovAeicat is attested by NB only; all other authorities apparently read SovAgvety. The former is quite certainly a modification of the original text under the influence of néAtv &vwev, which naturally calls for an inceptive form. The scribe missing the reference of the present to a second period of enslavement, substitutes the aorist to express the idea of a return to bondage. xéAw dywlev SouActoat would have furnished no temptation to change it. TIéAty originally meaning “back” (return to a previous position; cf. L. & S. and Th. s. v. and reff. there) but more commonly, in later Greek, “again” (repetition of a previous action) is often used when the repe- tition involves return to a previous state or position (Mk. 2! 31); but 232 GALATIANS also (like the English “again’’) when the action is a return to a pre- vious state through reversal, not, strictly speaking, repetition. So in chap. 117 Jn. 10! Rom. 11%. So also here, since there had been no previous émtoteépety ext t& .. . otorystz, but only an elvar bad te otoryetz, and the contemplated émtctogpety was not a repetition of a previous act but a reversal of the émtoteégery mobs toy Hedy (cf. 1 Thes. 1°), here described in yyévtes Oedy. Wieseler’s statement, “Das né&Aty, welches hier wiederum, nicht riickwéarts, heisst, weist auf eine frihere Bekehrung (éxtotoeog9n) hin, namlich auf die ihrem, v.* erwahn- ten Heidenthume gegenitiber in dem voy dé u. s. w. angedeutete Bekeh- rung von den Gétzen (éxtoteopt &xd tHy cidHAwy) zu Gott in Christo,” escapes self-contradiction only by the expedient of supposing mé&Atv to apply to émoteépete only, not to émtotoépete Ext . . . otorysia, an interpretation which would require us to read: “ How turn ye again, this time to the weak and beggarly rudiments ?”? The view, moreover, in support of which he resorts to this difficult expedient, viz., that Paul does not include the former heathenism of the Galatians under te . . . atotyetz compels him further to limit the effect of x&Atv &vwOev in the next clause to douAcvety, reading in effect, ‘‘to which ye desire to be in bondage, this constituting for you a second bondage.” Such a harsh severance of verb and adverb in two successive clauses is not demanded by the usage of w&Aty and is, in fact, self-refuting. The obvious and unescapable implication of the language is that the con- version tot& . . . otorystx is a return to a state generically the same as the idol-worship under which they formerly were. Against this it is irrelevant to point out that émorteégety does not mean “return” but only “turn,” since the idea of reversal is expressed in the adverb.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Finding myself, at length, in an isolated place, I sat down, more leisurely to ponder. However, night descended before I thought to return; of a sudden I felt myself seized by three men: one clapped a hand over my mouth, the other two precipitated me into a carriage, climbed in, and for three full hours we sped along, during which time not one of these brigands deigned either to say a word to me or respond to any of my questions. The blinds were drawn down, I saw nothing; the carriage came to a halt before a house, gates swung wide, we entered, the gates clanged to immediately. My abductors pick me up, lead me through several unlit apartments, and finally leave me in one near which is a room wherein I perceive a light. "Stay here," says one of my ravishers as he withdraws with his companions, "you're soon going to see an old acquaintance." And they disappear, carefully shutting all the doors. At almost the same time, that leading into the room where I had spied illumination is opened, and carrying a candle in her hand, I see emerge... oh, Madame, fancy who it was... Dubois... Dubois herself, that frightful monster, devoured, no question of it, by the most ardent desire to be revenged. "Hither, charming girl," said she in an arrogant tone, "come here and receive the reward for the virtues in which you indulged yourself at my expense..." And angrily clutching my hand: "...ah, you wretch I I'll teach you to betray me!" "No, Madame, no," I say in great haste, " I betrayed you not at all: inform yourself: I uttered not one word which could cause you any inquietude, no, I spoke not the least word which might compromise you." "But did you not offer resistance to the crime I meditated? have you not thwarted its execution, worthless creature! You've got to be chastened...." And, as we were entering, she had no time to say more. The apartment into which I was made to pass was lit with equal sumptuousness and magnificence; at the further end, reclining upon an ottoman, was a man of about forty, wearing a billowing taffeta dressing robe.

• From Less (2017)

  “Shh, you’ll wake Zohra. And what’s-his-name.” He moves closer to Less, picking up his wineglass. “Well, you know when I met Clark. Back in New York, at the art gallery. And we did that cross-country dating for a while, and finally I asked him to move to San Francisco. We were in the back room of the Art Bar—you remember, where you used to be able to buy coke—on the couches, and Clark said, ‘All right, I’ll move to San Francisco. I’ll live with you. But only for ten years. After ten years, I’ll leave you.’” Less looks around, but of course there is no one to share his disbelief. “You never told me that!” “Yes, he said, ‘After ten years, I’ll leave you.’ And I said, ‘Oh, ten years, that seems like plenty!’ That was all we ever talked about it. He never worried about quitting his job or leaving his rent-controlled place, he never bugged me about whose pots we got to keep or whose we got to throw away. He just moved into my place and set up his life. Just like that.” “I didn’t know any of this. I just thought you guys were together forever.” “Of course you did. I mean, I did too, honestly.” “Sorry, I’m just so surprised.” “Well, after ten years he said, ‘Let’s take a trip to New York.’ So we went to New York. I’d forgotten all about the deal, really. Things were going so well, we were, you know, very very happy together. We had a hotel in SoHo above a Chinese lamp store. And he said, ‘Let’s go to the Art Bar.’ So we took a taxi, and we went to the back room, and we had a drink, and he said, ‘Well, the ten years are up, Lewis.’” “This is Clark? Checking your expiration date?” “I know, he’s hopeless. He’ll drink any old carton of milk. But it’s true. He said the ten years are up. And I said, ‘Are you fucking serious? Are you leaving me, Clark?’ And he said no. He wanted to stay.” “Thank God for that.” “For ten more years.” “That’s crazy, Lewis. It’s like a timer. Like he’s checking to see if it’s done. You should have smacked him across the face. Or was he just messing with you? Were you guys high?” “No, no, maybe you’ve never seen this side of him? He’s so sloppy, I know, he leaves his underwear in the bathroom right where he took it off. But, you know, Clark has another side that’s very practical. He installed the solar panels.” “I think of Clark as so easygoing. And this is—this is neurotic.” “I think he’d say it’s practical. Or forward thinking. Anyway, we’re in the Art Bar, and I said, ‘Well, okay. I love you too, let’s get some champagne,’ and I didn’t think about it again.” “Then ten years later—”

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Quizás transferirme sea una buena idea después de todo. Me levanto. —La impresora necesita papel —le digo. Y sin mirarla, camino a la oficina de atrás, apartando el ardor de mis ojos antes que lo vea. No voy a llorar. No pudo esconderme por siempre aquí, después de todo. Northridge es mi hogar, mi familia está ahí, y tengo que regresar a la escuela en algún momento. Puedo hacerlo. —Hola —dice Danni alegremente a alguien—. Bienvenido a The Blue Palms. Me río. The Blue Palms son un conjunto de palmeras neones afuera que no son reales y ciertamente no son originarias de Virginia. Pero me gustan los colores tropicales del lugar, los rosas y azules antiguos, y el encanto playero de la vieja escuela. Puede que no tenga las comodidades de grandes hoteles, pero es privado, limpio, y nostálgico. Tiene su encanto. —Uh, gracias —dice una voz masculina—. Um… Abro el gabinete, tomando un paquete de hojas. Sus voces suenan ahogadas en el lobby. Espero que solo necesite una habitación, porque por primera vez, estamos casi agotados. —¿Jordan Hadley? —dice Danni más fuerte como si estuviera repitiendo. Me detengo con el papel en mi brazo y el gabinete todavía abierto. —Sí —contesta el hombre, y me acerco un poco más a la puerta para escuchar mejor—. Lamento molestarte. ¿Ella trabaja aquí? Me dijeron que trabajaba en un motel en el área, y he estado casi en todas partes. La vena en mi cuello salta, y apenas puedo conseguir respirar lentamente. —¿Y tú eres? —pregunta Danni. —Pike Lawson —responde—. Un amigo. Mis brazos se debilitan, y casi suelto el paquete de papel. —Pike… —repite Danni—. ¿Cómo en Buffy the Vampire Slayer? —¿Perdón? —¿Clásico de culto de 1992? —explica Danni—. ¿Luke Perry? ¿Su nombre es Pike en la película? Normalmente me burlaría de su diarrea verbal, pero mi cabeza está nadando y mi estómago está saltando. ¿Está aquí? ¿Realmente está aquí? Hay silencio por un momento, y luego Pike pregunta. —Entonces, ¿Jordan trabaja aquí? Realmente necesito verla. Suena tan vulnerable, su voz hace que me dé cuenta de que lo extraño más de lo que pensé. Pero de algún modo, en el interior, mi fuerza crece y enderezo mi espalda, lista para mostrarle que no voy a esconderme de él. No sé porque está aquí, pero si intenta hacer demandas una vez más como cuando intenté regresar con mi papá, no creo que me sea difícil enfrentarlo. Él no me dirá que hacer. No importa qué tan fuerte lo intente. Apareciendo detrás de la esquina, entro al lobby, viendo a Pike de pie del otro lado del mostrador. Su mirada inmediatamente se fija en la mía. Inhala, y solo me mira. Su cuerpo está rígido.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Pasa un momento de silencio y, lentamente, ambos nos alejamos un poco más, pero ninguno de los dos da la espalda. El silencio se hace más largo, la distancia más lejana, y finalmente levanta una mano, dándome una pequeña despedida antes de meter ambas manos en sus bolsillos traseros. Se despide. —Buenas noches —dice. Solo lo miro fijamente. Sí, buenas noches. Y luego me alejo, mi estómago se retuerce más apretadamente. Ni siquiera conseguí su nombre. Sería bueno decir “hola” si me encuentro con él de nuevo. Sin embargo, no tengo tiempo para lamentarme porque mi teléfono suena y lo saco del bolsillo, viendo el nombre de Cole en la pantalla. Me detengo en la acera y respondo: —Hola, ¿estás en Grounders? —pregunto—. Estoy casi allí. Sin embargo, no dice nada, y me detengo, llamándolo por su nombre. —¿Cole? ¿Hola, estás ahí? Nada. —¿Cole? —digo más fuerte. Pero la línea está muerta. Voy a llamarlo, pero escucho una voz detrás de mí. —¿Tu novio se llama Cole? —pregunta el hombre del teatro—. ¿Cole Lawson? Me giro para verlo caminar lentamente hacia mí. —Sí —contesto—. ¿Lo conoces? Duda por un momento, como si estuviera aceptando algo, y luego extiende su mano y finalmente se presenta. —Soy Pike. Pike Lawson. ¿Lawson? Se detiene un momento y luego agrega: —Su padre. Mis pulmones se vacían. —¿Qué? —Exhalo. ¿Su padre? Mi boca se abre, pero la cierro de nuevo, mirando a este hombre con nuevos ojos mientras la comprensión es asimilada. Cole ha hablado de su padre de pasada, sabía que vivía en el área, pero no son cercanos, por lo que sé. La impresión que tuve del padre de Cole, por las breves menciones de su hijo, no coincide con el hombre con el que hablé esta noche en el teatro. Es agradable. Y es fácil hablar con él. Y apenas parece lo suficientemente mayor como para tener un hijo de diecinueve años, por todos los cielos. —¿Su padre? —repito en voz alta. Me da una sonrisa cortante, y sé que este es un giro de los acontecimientos que tampoco esperaba. Después oigo su celular vibrar en su bolsillo, y lo saca, revisando la pantalla. —Y si me está llamando ahora, debe estar en problemas —dice, mirando el teléfono—. ¿Necesitas un aventón? —¿Un aventón adónde? —La estación de policía, supongo. —Suspira, contesta el teléfono y lidera el camino—. Vámonos. —No creo que esta sea una buena idea —le digo a Cole, sacando mis cajas de leche apiladas de la parte trasera de su auto—. Me siento como una vividora. Mi novio muestra esa peculiar inclinación de sus labios donde solo ves el lado izquierdo de sus dientes. —Entonces, ¿qué vas a hacer? —Me mira, deslizando mi mesa de dibujo plegable hacia él y levantándola—. ¿Quedarte en casa de tus padres? Sus ojos azules están entrecerrados, probablemente por la falta de sueño, mientras ambos caminamos y colocamos nuestras cosas en los escalones del porche de la casa de Pike Lawson. Nuestro nuevo hogar.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  I said we were sorry.” “Actually, you didn’t.” “Well, we are.” “Okay.” She realized then she was standing outside the bathroom in an oversize T-shirt and underpants, with a toothbrush in her hand, talking to some sixteen-year-old boy she didn’t even like. And then Gus did the strangest thing. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I really am sorry, Cough Drop,” he said. “We acted like shits . Good night.” Which left her completely speechless. Gus and Daniel gave Vix a belated birthday present, a jigsaw puzzle, “Seeing Red,” five hundred pieces all in one solid color. They bet Sharkey twenty bucks she wouldn’t be able to finish it in a week. “What’s in it for her?” Caitlin asked. “Why should she bust her ass for any of you?” “What are you, her agent?” Daniel said. “That’s right,” Caitlin told him, “I’m her agent.” “Okay …” Daniel said. “She gets twenty if she makes it, which means we’re laying out forty. Are you and Sharkey going to match us if she doesn’t?” Caitlin nodded at Sharkey, who looked at Vix for confirmation. She gave him a thumbs-up. “You’re on,” Sharkey told the Chicago Boys. For two nights the four of them pulled chairs up to the card table and watched Vix, as if she were Bobby Fischer. But with everyone staring she couldn’t concentrate. She made almost no progress. Daniel and Gus eyed each other smugly. Vix was determined to prove them wrong. She rose at sunrise the next day and for two days after that. The others would find her there when they came down to breakfast, studying the pieces, locking together the edges, constructing separate sections, until the end of the sixth day, when she knew she had it. She let them watch that night, enjoying every step toward victory, and when she placed the final pieces Sharkey pumped his fist in the air and cried, “Yes!” He lifted her out of her chair and before she could stop him, swung her around. She was totally amazed. But when she smiled down at him he released her without a word, collected his share of the winnings, and disappeared. Gus and Daniel hung around to help the girls celebrate. “How about a consolation prize?” Gus said. “What did you have in mind?” Caitlin asked. He smiled and looked her over. “Whatever you’re willing to give.” “You wish!” She threw the empty puzzle box at him. He and Daniel laughed and went off together. 11VIX WONDERED if Abby ever guessed how she fantasized about being her daughter, how she dreamed of being beautiful and rich and living in the big house in Cambridge, not that she’d ever seen it, but she’d seen pictures. Just weeks earlier, on the night of Vix’s fourteenth birthday, when she and Caitlin had dressed up for dinner at The Black Dog, Abby had said, “You both look so pretty.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Sharfstein, the president of the APA. But at the 2005 annual meeting of the International Association of Scientologists, Mike Rinder, who had been let out of the Hole for the occasion, credited Cruise with persuading the Food and Drug Administration to post suicide warnings on the labels of two psychiatric drugs within days of his interview with Lauer. “ If someone wants to get off drugs, I can help them,” Cruise told the German magazine Der Spiegel , in April 2005. “I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs.” HAGGIS HAD SENT a rough cut of his movie Crash to the Toronto Film Festival, an important venue for independent films that are looking for distribution. In September 2004, the movie met its first audience at the Elgin Theatre, an elegant old vaudeville house downtown, not far from the spot where Paul sold tickets at the soft-porn theater his professor used to run. As he watched the movie, Haggis was appalled. Everything that was wrong was glaringly apparent on the huge screen. He sat glumly waiting for it to end, calculating what could be salvaged. So when the audience rose to its feet at the end, cheering, Haggis couldn’t believe what was happening. Lion’s Gate Films bought Crash for $3.5 million and scheduled it for release the following spring. Crash opened quietly in April 2005. There were no billboards or bus signs, which were already touting the arrival of War of the Worlds in June. The reviews for Crash were passionate but polarized. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, calling it “ a movie of intense fascination.” A. O. Scott, who reviewed it for the New York Times , was less infatuated. It was a “ frustrating movie,” he wrote, “full of heart and devoid of life; crudely manipulative when it tries hardest to be subtle; and profoundly complacent in spite of its intention to unsettle and disturb.” There was no actual premiere, just a screening at the Academy Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, and no grand party afterward. Haggis and his family went out to dinner. Despite the conflicting reviews and limited distribution, a groundswell was building for the movie, driven entirely by audiences who were caught up in a national conversation over race and class that the movie prompted. It would go on to earn nearly $100 million in international sales. Million Dollar Baby had just won the Academy Award for Best Picture that February. Haggis was writing a James Bond movie, Casino Royale , in addition to the Eastwood picture Flags of Our Fathers . He was flying. Tom Cruise’s career was headed in the opposite direction. Haggis had seen him at the Vanity Fair Oscar party. Cruise and Tommy Davis arrived on Ducati motorcycles, wearing black jackets, and were let in the back door of Morton’s Steakhouse in Beverly Hills. They said hello to Haggis, but nothing more.