Tristram Shandy

by Laurence Sterne

I would sooner undertake to explain the hardest problem in geometry, than pretend to account for
it, that a gentleman of my father's great good sense,—knowing, as the reader must have observed
him, and curious too in philosophy,—wise also in political reasoning,—and in polemical (as he
will find) no way ignorant,—could be capable of entertaining a notion in his head, so out of the
common track,—that I fear the reader, when I come to mention it to him, if he is the least of a
cholerick temper, will immediately throw the book by; if mercurial, he will laugh most heartily
at it;—and if he is of a grave and saturnine cast, he will, at first sight, absolutely condemn as
fanciful and extravagant; and that was in respect to the choice and imposition of christian names,
on which he thought a great deal more depended than what superficial minds were capable of
conceiving.

His opinion, in this matter, was, That there was a strange kind of magick bias, which good or bad
names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed upon our characters and conduct.

The hero of Cervantes argued not the point with more seriousness,—nor had he more faith,—or
more to say on the powers of necromancy in dishonouring his deeds,—or on Dulcinea's name, in
shedding lustre upon them, than my father had on those of Trismegistus or Archimedes, on the
one hand—or of Nyky and Simkin on the other. How many Caesars and Pompeys, he would say,
by mere inspiration of the names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many, he would
add, are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their characters and
spirits been totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing?

I see plainly, Sir, by your looks, (or as the case happened) my father would say—that you do not
heartily subscribe to this opinion of mine,—which, to those, he would add, who have not
carefully sifted it to the bottom,—I own has an air more of fancy than of solid reasoning in it;—
and yet, my dear Sir, if I may presume to know your character, I am morally assured, I should
hazard little in stating a case to you, not as a party in the dispute,—but as a judge, and trusting
my appeal upon it to your own good sense and candid disquisition in this matter;—you are a
person free from as many narrow prejudices of education as most men;—and, if I may presume
to penetrate farther into you,—of a liberality of genius above bearing down an opinion, merely
because it wants friends. Your son,—your dear son,—from whose sweet and open temper you
have so much to expect.—Your Billy, Sir!—would you, for the world, have called him Judas?—
Would you, my dear Sir, he would say, laying his hand upon your breast, with the genteelest
address,—and in that soft and irresistible piano of voice, which the nature of the argumentum ad
hominem absolutely requires,—Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather had proposed the name
for your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a
desecration of him?—O my God! he would say, looking up, if I know your temper right, Sir,—
you are incapable of it;—you would have trampled upon the offer;—you would have thrown the
temptation at the tempter's head with abhorrence.
 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by T.S. Eliot

LET us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…. 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go 35

Talking of Michelangelo.
 The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
1
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes
and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the
basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone. A balcony ran around the room, for
the spectators, and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat,
shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls, felt-
skirted as I knew from pictures, later in miniskirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green-
streaked hair. Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard
sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums, a forlorn wail, garlands made of tissue-paper
flowers, cardboard devils, a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of
light.
There was old sex in the room and loneliness, and expectation, of something without a shape or
name. I remember that yearning, for something that was always about to happen and was never
the same as the hands that were on us there and then, in the small of the back, or out back, in the
parking lot, or in the television room with the sound turned down and only the pictures flickering
over lifting flesh.
We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability? It was in the air; and
it was still in the air, an afterthought, as we tried to sleep, in the army cots that had been set up in
rows, with spaces between so we could not talk. We had flannelette sheets, like children's, and
army-issue blankets, old ones that still said U.S. We folded our clothes neatly and laid them on
the stools at the ends of the beds. The lights were turned down but not out. Aunt Sara and Aunt
Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts.
No guns though, even they could not be trusted with guns. Guns were for the guards, specially
picked from the Angels. The guards weren't allowed inside the building except when called, and
we weren't allowed out, except for our walks, twice daily, two by two around the football field,
which was enclosed now by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The Angels stood
outside it with their backs to us. They were objects of fear to us, but of something else as well. If
only they would look. If only we could talk to them. Something could be exchanged, we thought,
some deal made, some tradeoff, we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy.
We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we could stretch out our arms,
when the Aunts weren't looking, and touch each other's hands across space. We learned to lip-
read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way we
exchanged names, from bed to bed:
Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.
 The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
2
A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath,
and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the place in a face where the eye has
been taken out. There must have been a chandelier, once. They've removed anything you could
tie a rope to.
A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little cushion. When the
window is partly open—it only opens partly—the air can come in and make the curtains move. I
can sit in the chair, or on the window seat, hands folded, and watch this. Sunlight comes in
through the window too, and falls on the floor, which is made of wood, in narrow strips, highly
polished. I can smell the polish. There's a rug on the floor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind
of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from things that have no
further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I
want?
On the wall above the chair, a picture, framed but with no glass: a print of flowers, blue irises,
watercolor. Flowers are still allowed. Does each of us have the same print, the same chair, the
same white curtains, I wonder? Government issue?
Think of it as being in the army, said Aunt Lydia.
A bed. Single, mattress medium-hard, covered with a flocked white spread. Nothing takes place
in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much. Like other things now, thought must
be rationed. There's a lot that doesn't bear thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I
intend to last. I know why there is no glass, in front of the watercolor picture of blue irises, and
why the window opens only partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn't running away
they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself,
given a cutting edge.
So. Apart from these details, this could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished
visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. That
is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have
circumstances.
But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my
hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia
said, who was in love with either/or.
The bell that measures time is ringing. Time here is measured by bells, as once in nunneries. As
in a nunnery too, there are few mirrors.
 Nice Work
by David Lodge

Robyn Penrose, temporary Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Rummidge, holds
that ‘character’ is a bourgeois myth, an illusion created to reinforce the ideology of capitalism.
As evidence for this assertion she will point the fact that the rise of the novel (the literary genre
of ‘character’ par excellence) in the eighteenth century coincided with the rise of capitalism; that
the triumph of the novel over all other literary genres in the nineteenth century coincided with
the triumph of capitalism; and that the modernist and postmodernist deconstruction of the classic
novel in the twentieth century has coincided with the terminal crisis of capitalism. Why the
classic novel should have collaborated with the spirit of capitalism is perfectly obvious to Robyn.
Both are expressions of a secularized Protestant ethic, both dependent on the idea of an
autonomous individual self who is responsible for and in control of his/her own destiny, seeking
happiness and fortune in competition with other autonomous selves. This is true of the novel
considered both as commodity and as mode of representation. (Thus Robyn in full seminar
spate.) That is to say, it applies to novelists themselves as well as to their heroes and heroines.
The novelist is a capitalist of the imagination. He or she invents a product which consumers
didn’t know they wanted until it is made available, manufactures it with the assistance of
purveyors of risk capital known as publishers, and sells it in competition with makers of
marginally differentiated products of the same kind. The first major English novelist, Daniel
Defoe, was a merchant. The second, Samuel Richardson, was a printer. The novel was the first
mass-produced cultural artefact. (At this point Robyn, with elbows tucked into her sides, would
spread her hands outwards from the wrist, as if to imply that there is no need to say more. But of
course she always has much more to say.) According to Robyn (or, more precisely, according to
the writers who have influenced her thinking on these matters), there is no such thing as the ‘self’
on which capitalism and the classic novel are founded – that is to say, a finite, unique soul or
essence that constitutes a person’s identity; there is only a subject position in an infinite web of
discourses – the discourses of power, sex, family, science, religion, poetry, etc. And by the same
token, there is no such thing as an author, that is to say, one who originates a work of fiction ab
nihilo. Every text is a product of intertextuality, a tissue of allusions to and citations of other
texts; and, in the famous words of Jacques Derrida (famous to people like Robyn, anyway), ‘il
n’y a pas de hors-texte’, there is nothing outside the text. There are no origins, there is only
production, and we produce our ‘selves’ in language. Not ‘you are what you eat’ but ‘you are
what you speak’ or, rather ‘you are what speaks you’, is the axiomatic bases of Robyn’s
philosophy, which she would call, if required to give it a name, ‘semiotic materialism’. It might
seem a bit bleak, a bit inhuman (‘antihumanist, yes; inhuman, no,’ she would interject),
somewhat deterministic (‘not at all, the truly determined subject is he who is not aware of the
discursive formations that determine him. Or her,’ she would add scrupulously, being among
other things a feminist), but in practice this doesn’t seem to affect her behaviour very noticeably
– she seems to have ordinary human feelings, ambitions, desires, to suffer anxieties, frustrations,
fears, like anyone else in this imperfect world, and to have a natural inclination to try and make it
a better place. I shall therefore take the liberty of treating her as a character, not utterly different
in kind, though of course belonging to a very different social species, from Vic Wilcox.
 Nice Work
by David Lodge
Robyn sat up all night printing out her book. She considered the effort would be worthwhile if
she could secure the endorsement of a prestigious imprint like Euphoric State University Press.
Besides, there was something about Morris Zapp that inspired hope. He had blown into the
jaded, demoralized atmosphere of Rummidge University like an invigorating breeze, intimating
that there were still places in the world where scholars and critics pursued their professional
goals with zestful confidence, where conferences multiplied and grants were to be head to attend
them, where conversation at academic parties was more likely to be about the latest scaling-
down of departmental maintenance grants. She felt renewed faith in her book, and her vocation,
as she crouched, yawning and red-eyed, over her computer. Even at draft speed, it took a long
time to spew out her sixty thousand words, and it was nearly eight-fifteen in the morning when
she finished the task. She drove quickly through the deserted Sunday streets to deliver her
manuscript. It was a bright sunny morning, with a strong wind that was stripping the cherry-
blossom from the trees. A taxi trembled at the kerb outside the Swallows’ house. In the front
porch Hilary Swallow, in a dressing-gown, was saying goodbye to Morris Zapp, while Philip,
carrying Morris Zapp’s suitcase, hovered anxiously halfway down the garden path, like a
complaisant cuckold seeing off the lover of the night before. But whatever passion there might
have been between Zapp and Mrs Swallow had cooled long ago, Robyn inferred, from the
merely amicable way they brushed each other’s cheeks. Indeed, it was difficult to imagine these
three almost elderly figures being involved in a sexual intrigue at all. ‘Come on, Morris!’
Swallow called out. ‘Your taxi’s waiting.’ Then he swung round and caught sight of Robyn.
‘Good Lord – Robyn! What are you doing here at this hour of the morning?’ As she was
explaining all over again, Morris Zapp came waddling down the garden path, an open Burberry
flapping round his knees. ‘Hiya, Robyn, howya doin’?’ He drew a cigar a long-barrelled weapon
from an inside pocket and clamped it between his teeth. ‘Here’s the manuscript.’ ‘Great, I’ll read
it as soon as I can.’ He lit his cigar, shielding the flame against the wind. ‘It’s unfinished, as I
told you. And unrevised.’ ‘Sure, sure,’ said Morris Zapp. ‘I’ll let you know what I think. If I like
it, I’ll call you, if I don’t I’ll mail it back. Is your phone number on the manuscript?’ ‘No,’ said
Robyn, ‘I’ll give it to you.’ ‘Do that. Haven’t you noticed that in the modern world good news
comes by telephone and bad news by mail?’ ‘Now that you mention it,’ said Robyn, scribbling
her phone number on the outside of the package. ‘Morris, the taxi,’ said Philip Swallow. ‘Relax,
Philip, he’s not going to run away – are you, driver?’ ‘No, sir,’ said the taxi-driver, from behind
his wheel, ‘it’s all the same to me.’ ‘There you are,’ said Morris Zapp, stuffing Robyn’s
manuscript into a briefcase bulging with books and periodicals. [……….] Blossom swirled in the
road like confetti as the taxi drew away. They stood on the edge of the pavement and waved until
the car turned the corner. ‘He’s fun, isn’t he?’ said Robyn. ‘He’s a rogue’ said Philip Swallow.
‘An amiable rogue. I’m surprised that he wanted to see your book.’ ‘Why?’ ‘He can’t stand
feminists, usually. They’ve given him such a rough time in the past, at conferences and in
reviews.’
 Animal Farm
by George Orwell
Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to
remember to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side,
he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer
from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already
snoring. As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all
through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize
Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it
to the other animals. It had been agreed that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr.
Jones was safely out of the way. Old Major (so he was always called, though the name under
which he had been exhibited was Willingdon Beauty) was so highly regarded on the farm that
everyone was quite ready to lose an hour’s sleep in order to hear what he had to say. At one end
of the big barn, on a sort of raised platform, Major was already ensconced on his bed of straw,
under a lantern which hung from a beam. He was twelve years old and had lately grown rather
stout, but he was still a majesticlooking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of
the fact that his tushes had never been cut. Before long the other animals began to arrive and
make themselves comfortable after their different fashions. First came the three dogs, Bluebell,
Jessie, and Pincher, and then the pigs, who settled down in the straw immediately in front of the
platform. The hens perched themselves on the window-sills, the pigeons fluttered up to the
rafters, the sheep and cows lay down behind the pigs and began to chew the cud. The two cart-
horses, Boxer and Clover, came in together, walking very slowly and setting down their vast
hairy hoofs with great care lest there should be some small animal concealed in the straw. Clover
was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after
her fourth foal. Boxer was an enormous beast, nearly eighteen hands high, and as strong as any
two ordinary horses put together. A white stripe down his nose gave him a somewhat stupid
appearance, and in fact he was not of first-rate intelligence, but he was universally respected for
his steadiness of character and tremendous powers of work. After the horses came Muriel, the
white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the
worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark
— for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he
would sooner have had no tail and no flies. Alone among the animals on the farm he never
laughed. If asked why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at. Nevertheless, without
openly admitting it, he was devoted to Boxer; the two of them usually spent their Sundays
together in the small paddock beyond the orchard, grazing side by side and never speaking. The
two horses had just lain down when a brood of ducklings, which had lost their mother, filed into
the barn, cheeping feebly and wandering from side to side to find some place where they would
not be trodden on. Clover made a sort of wall round them with her great foreleg, and the
ducklings nestled down inside it and promptly fell asleep. At the last moment Mollie, the foolish,
pretty white mare who drew Mr. Jones’s trap, came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump of
sugar. She took a place near the front and began flirting her white mane, hoping to draw attention
to the red ribbons it was plaited with. Last of all came the cat, who looked round, as usual, for
the warmest place, and finally squeezed herself in between Boxer and Clover; there she purred
contentedly throughout Major’s speech without listening to a word of what he was saying. All
the animals were now present except Moses, the tame raven, who slept on a perch behind the
back door.
 Animal Farm
by George Orwell
When Major saw that they had all made themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively, he
cleared his throat and began: ‘Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I
had last night. But I will come to the dream later. I have something else to say first. I do not
think, comrades, that I shall be with you for many months longer, and before I die, I feel it my
duty to pass on to you such wisdom as I have acquired. I have had a long life, I have had much
time for thought as I lay alone in my stall, and I think I may say that I understand the nature of
life on this earth as well as any animal now living. It is about this that I wish to speak to you.
‘Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable,
laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our
bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength;
and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous
cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old.
No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
‘But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it
cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The
soil of England is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance to an
enormously greater number of animals than now inhabit it. This single farm of ours would
support a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep — and all of them living in a comfort
and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this
miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by
human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single
word — Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root
cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever. ‘Man is the only creature that consumes
without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the
plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them
to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the
rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one
of us that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that I see before me, how many thousands of
gallons of milk have you given during this last year? And what has happened to that milk which
should have been breeding up sturdy calves? Every drop of it has gone down the throats of our
enemies. And you hens, how many eggs have you laid in this last year, and how many of those
eggs ever hatched into chickens? The rest have all gone to market to bring in money for Jones
and his men. And you, Clover, where are those four foals you bore, who should have been the
support and pleasure of your old age? Each was sold at a year old — you will never see one of
them again. In return for your four confinements and all your labour in the fields, what have you
ever had except your bare rations and a stall? ‘And even the miserable lives we lead are not
allowed to reach their natural span. For myself I do not grumble, for I am one of the lucky ones. I
am twelve years old and have had over four hundred children. Such is the natural life of a pig.
But no animal escapes the cruel knife in the end. You young porkers who are sitting in front of
me, every one of you will scream your lives out at the block within a year. To that horror we all
must come — cows, pigs, hens, sheep, everyone. Even the horses and the dogs have no better
fate. You, Boxer, the very day that those great muscles of yours lose their power, Jones will sell
you to the knacker, who will cut your throat and boil you down for the foxhounds.
 Animal Farm
by George Orwell
‘Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the
tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour would be our own.
A1most overnight we could become rich and free. What then must we do? Why, work night and
day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the human race! That is my message to you, comrades:
Rebellion! I do not know when that Rebellion will come, it might be in a week or in a hundred
years, but I know, as surely as I see this straw beneath my feet, that sooner or later justice will be
done. Fix your eyes on that, comrades, throughout the short remainder of your lives! And above
all, pass on this message of mine to those who come after you, so that future generations shall
carry on the struggle until it is victorious. ‘And remember, comrades, your resolution must never
falter. No argument must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that Man and the
animals have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the others. It is
all lies. Man serves the interests of no creature except himself. And among us animals let there
be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the struggle. All men are enemies. All animals are
comrades.’
At this moment there was a tremendous uproar. While Major was speaking four large rats had
crept out of their holes and were sitting on their hindquarters, listening to him. The dogs had
suddenly caught sight of them, and it was only by a swift dash for their holes that the rats saved
their lives. Major raised his trotter for silence. ‘Comrades,’ he said, ‘here is a point that must be
settled. The wild creatures, such as rats and rabbits — are they our friends or our enemies? Let us
put it to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting: Are rats comrades?’ The vote was taken
at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades. There were
only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted
on both sides. Major continued: 3 ‘I have little more to say. I merely repeat, remember always
your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting
against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not
adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink
alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are evil.
And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or
simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.
‘And now, comrades, I will tell you about my dream of last night. I cannot describe that dream to
you. It was a dream of the earth as it will be when Man has vanished. But it reminded me of
something that I had long forgotten. Many years ago, when I was a little pig, my mother and the
other sows used to sing an old song of which they knew only the tune and the first three words. I
had known that tune in my infancy, but it had long since passed out of my mind. Last night,
however, it came back to me in my dream. And what is more, the words of the song also came
back — words, I am certain, which were sung by the animals of long ago and have been lost to
memory for generations. I will sing you that song now, comrades. I am old and my voice is
hoarse, but when I have taught you the tune, you can sing it better for yourselves. It is called
Beasts of England.’
 Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a
trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain
Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at
school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have
a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I
not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as
many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a
murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what
the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of
thorns. I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial
genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his
veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He
owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels
and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist,
and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and
Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic,
lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her
subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am
writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent
remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered
and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden
midges. My mother's elder sister, Sybil, whom a cousin of my father's had married and then
neglected, served in my immediate family as a kind of unpaid governess and housekeeper.
Somebody told me later that she had been in love with my father, and that he had lightheartedly
taken advantage of it one rainy day and forgotten it by the time the weather cleared. I was
extremely fond of her, despite the rigidity--the fatal rigidity--of some of her rules. Perhaps she
wanted to make of me, in the fullness of time, a better widower than my father. Aunt Sybil had
pink-rimmed azure eyes and a waxen complexion. She wrote poetry. She was poetically
superstitious. She said she knew she would die soon after my sixteenth birthday, and did. Her
husband, a great traveler in perfumes, spent most of his time in America, where eventually he
founded a firm and acquired a bit of real estate. I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright would
of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces. Around
me the splendid Hotel Mirana revolved as a kind of private universe, a whitewashed cosmos
within the blue greater one that blazed outside. From the aproned pot-scrubber to the flanneled
potentate, everybody liked me, everybody petted me. Elderly American ladies leaning on their
canes listed towards me like towers of Pisa. Ruined Russian princesses who could not pay my
father, bought me expensive bonbons. He, mon cher petit papa, took me out boating and biking,
taught me to swim and dive and water-ski, read to me Don Quixote and Les Miserables, and I
adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I overheard the servants discuss his
various lady-friends, beautiful and kind beings who made much of me and cooed and shed
precious tears over my cheerful motherlessness. I attended an English day school a few miles
from home, and there I played rackets and fives, and got excellent marks, and was on perfect
terms with schoolmates and teachers alike.
 Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I
remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita.
There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the
laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as:
"honey-colored skin," "think arms," "brown bobbed hair," "long lashes," "big bright mouth");
and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark inner side of your eyelids,
the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this
is how I see Lolita). Let me therefore primly limit myself, in describing Annabel, to saying she
was a lovely child a few months my junior. Her parents were old friends of my aunt's, and as
stuffy as she. They had rented a villa not far from Hotel Mirana. Bald brown Mr. Leigh and fat,
powdered Mrs. Leigh (born Vanessa van Ness). How I loathed them! At first, Annabel and I
talked of peripheral affairs. She kept lifting handfuls of fine sand and letting it pour through her
fingers. Our brains were turned the way those of intelligent European preadolescents were in our
day and set, and I doubt if much individual genius should be assigned to our interest in the
plurality of inhabited worlds, competitive tennis, infinity, solipsism and so on. The softness and
fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain. She wanted to be a nurse in some
famished Asiatic country; I wanted to be a famous spy. All at once we were madly, clumsily,
shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of
mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating
every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum
children would have so easily found an opportunity to do. After one wild attempt we made to
meet at night in her garden (of which more later), the only privacy we were allowed was to be
out of earshot but not out of sight on the populous part of the plage. There, on the soft sand, a
few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire,
and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-
hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and
nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance
rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other's salty
lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state
of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other,
could bring relief. Among some treasures I lost during the wanderings of my adult years, there
was a snapshot taken by my aunt which showed Annabel, her parents and the staid, elderly, lame
gentleman, a Dr. Cooper, who that same summer courted my aunt, grouped around a table in a
sidewalk cafe. Annabel did not come out well, caught as she was in the act of bending over her
chocolat glacè, and her thin bare shoulders and the parting in her hair were about all that could
be identified (as I remember that picture) amid the sunny blur into which her lost loveliness
graded; but I, sitting somewhat apart from the rest, came out with a kind of dramatic
conspicuousness: a moody, beetle-browed boy in a dark sport shirt and well-tailored white
shorts, his legs crossed, sitting in profile, looking away. That photograph was taken on the last
day of our fatal summer and just a few minutes before we made our second and final attempt to
thwart fate. Under the flimsiest of pretexts (this was our very last chance, and nothing really
mattered) we escaped from the cafe to the beach, and found a desolate stretch of sand, and there,
in the violet shadow of some red rocks forming a kind of cave, had a brief session of avid
caresses, with somebody's lost pair of sunglasses for only witness.
 The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro

Yo
He was a cheerful fellow and seemed genuinely interested, so I confess I did spend a little time
telling him about Darlington Hall in former days. In the main, I tried to convey to him some of
the ‘know-how’, as he put it, involved in overseeing large events of the sort we used often to
have. Indeed, I believe I even revealed to him several of my professional ‘secrets’ designed to
bring that extra bit out of staff, as well as the various ‘sleights-of-hand’ – the equivalent of a
conjuror’s – by which a butler could cause a thing to occur at just the right time and place
without guests even glimpsing the often large and complicated manoeuvre behind the
operation…
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
‘The fact is, of course,’ I said after a while, ‘I gave my best to Lord Darlington. I gave him the
very best I had to give, and now – well – I find I do not have a great deal more left to give.’
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
‘You must have been very attached to this Lord whatever. And it’s three years since he passed
away, you say? I can see you were very attached to him, mate.’
‘Lord Darlington wasn’t a bad man. He wasn’t a bad man, at all. And at least he had the
privilege of being able to say at the end of his life that he made his own mistakes. His lordship
was a courageous man. He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there,
he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I
trusted in his lordship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something
worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what
dignity is there in that?’
‘Now, look, mate, I’m not sure I follow everything you’re saying. But if you ask me, your
attitude‘s all wrong, see? Don’t keep looking back all the time, you’re bound to get depressed.
And all right, you can’t do your job as well as you used to. But it’s the same for all of us, see?
We’ve all got to put our feet up at some point. Look at me. Been happy as a lark since the day I
retired. All right, so neither of us are exactly in our first flush of youth, but you’ve got to keep
looking forward.’ And I believe it was then that he said: ‘You’ve got to enjoy yourself. The
evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up
and enjoy it. That’s how I look at it. Ask anybody, they’ll all tell you. The evening’s the best part
of the day.’