book excerptise:   a book unexamined is not worth having

Vice: An Anthology

Richard Davenport-Hines

Davenport-Hines, Richard;

Vice: An Anthology

Hamish Hamilton / Penguin, 1993, 559 pages

ISBN 0241132371, 9780241132371

topics: |  anthology | poetry | quotations | sex


A fascinating collection - every page has something that holds you.  You
romp through the darker underbelly of western literature, from classical
times (Sappho, Lucretius, Plutarch), to the mid-20th c. (Thomas Gunn,
Sylvia Plath, Italo Calvino).  Poetry, prose extracts, organized into
themes that never quite work, but are great reads anyhow.  Great fodder to
make you seek out the originals.  Like most books of quotations and
extracts, a great bathroom read.

The French appear prominently - Baudelaire, Anatole France, Marguerite
Duras, Proust, Flaubert;  a good section of English nobility (Vita
Sackville-West, Byron, Earl of Rochester), and also Americans (Fitzgerald,
Sinclair Lewis).  Although Anais Nin figures, Henry Miller is surprisingly
absent.

The only problem I had was that the extracts are stripped bare of all
provenance - there is an utter disregard for the context of each texts.
Only the index of authors at the end provides the dates for each author.
Although about half the texts are from other European languages,
translators are prominent by their complete absence.

Adultery : Carol Ann Duffy p.2


Wear dark glasses in the rain.
Regard what was unhurt
as though through a bruise.
Guilt. A sick, green tint.

New gloves, money tucked in the palms,
the handshake crackles. Hands
can do many things. Phone.
Open the wine. Wash themselves. Now

you are naked under your clothes all day,
slim with deceit. Only the once
brings you alone to your knees,
miming, more, more, older and sadder,

creative. Suck a lie with a hole in it
on the way home from a lethal, thrilling night
up against a wall, faster. Language
unpeels a lost cry. You're a bastard.

Do it do it do it. Sweet darkness
in the afternoon; a voice in your ear
telling you how you are wanted,
which way, now. A telltale clock

wiping the hours from its face, your face
on a white sheet, gasping, radiant, yes.
Pay for it in cash, fiction, cab-fares back
to the life which crumbles like a wedding-cake.

Paranoia for lunch; too much
to drink, as a hand on your thigh
tilts the restaurant. You know all about love,
don't you. Turn on your beautiful eyes

for a stranger who's dynamite in bed, again
and again; a slow replay in the kitchen
where the slicing of innocent onions
scalds you to tears. Then, selfish autobiographical sleep

in a marital bed, the tarnished spoon of your body
stirring betrayal, your heart over-ripe at the core.
You're an expert, darling; your flowers
dumb and explicit on nobody's birthday.

So write the script - illness and debt,
a ring thrown away in a garden
no moon can heal, your own words
commuting to bile in your mouth, terror -

and all for the same thing twice. And all
for the same thing twice. You did it.
What. Didn't you. Fuck. Fuck. No. That was
the wrong verb. This is only an abstract noun.
	[since may 09, Carol Ann Duffy is the UK Poet Laureate]


John Dryden: Why should a foolish marriage vow p.10


	Why should a foolish marriage vow,
	  Which long ago was made,
	Oblige us to each other now
	  When passion is decay'd?
	We loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
	  Till our love was loved out in us both:
	But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
	  'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

	If I have pleasures for a friend,
	  And farther love in store,
	What wrong has he whose joys did end,
	  And who could give no more?
	'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me,
	Or that I should bar him of another:
	For all we can gain is to give our selves pain,
	When neither can hinder the other.

Vita Sackville-West: A duchess dresses p.97

			     		(from The Edwardians, 1930)

	[In the country estate at Chevron, the widowed duchess Lucy is dressing
	for her extravagant weekly dinner party.  Vita's ancestral home at Knole
	estate was the setting for her lover Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando
	(1928)); this inspired her to write of her own childhood experiences
	in The Edwardians. ]

"Give me a wrap, Button.  You can start doing my hair.  Sebastian, give me
the plan of the dinner-table.  On the table there.  No, silly boy.  Button
give it to his Grace.  Now, Sebastian, read it out to me while I have my hair
done.  Oh, George Roehampton takes me in, does he?  Must he? Such a bore
that man is.  And Sir Adam on the other side.  Don't pull my hair like that,
Button; really, I never knew such a clumsy woman, now you have given me a
headache for the rest of the evening.  Do be more careful.  Well, I am not
going to enjoy myself very much, I can see: Sir Adam and George Roehampton.
However, it's inevitable.  Or not, let me see for myself.  That Miss Wace is
such a fool that she may quite well have made a muddle of the whole thing.
Come and hold the plan for me to see, Sebastian.  Button! you pulled my hair
again.  How many times must I tell you to be careful?  Once more, and I give
you notice, I declare I will.  Tilt it up, Sebastian; I can't see."

Sebastian stood beside his mother holding the red leather pad, with slits
into which cards bearing the names of the guests were inserted. As he stood
holding it, he watched his mother's reflection in the mirror. With her fair
hair and lively little crumpled face, she looked extraordinarily young for
her age...  If he had been asked to describe his mother, he must have
said, "She is a famous hostess, with a talent for mimicry and a genius for
making parties a success. She is charming and vivacious. In private life she
is often irritable and sometimes unkind. She likes bridge and racing. She
never opens a book, and she cannot bear to be alone. I have not the faintest
idea of what she is really like." He would not have added, because he did not
know, that she was ruthless and predatory.

"Why are you staring like that, Sebastian? You make me quite shy." Her hair
was about her shoulders now, and Button was busy with the curling-tongs. She
heated them first on the spirit lamp, and then held them carefully to her
own cheek to feel if they were hot enough. "Bless the boy, one would think he
had never watched me dress before. Now about that dinner-table, yes, it's all
wrong; I thought it would be. She has clean forgotten the ambassador. Button,
you must call Miss Wace — no, Sebastian, you fetch her.  No, ring the bell; I
don't want you to go away.  Why on earth can't people do their own jobs
properly?  What do I pay Wacey a hundred and fifty a year for, I should like
to know?  Oh dear, and look at the time; I shall be late for dinner. I declare
the trouble of entertaining is enough to spoil all one's pleasure. It's a
little hard, I do think, that one should never have any undiluted pleasure in
life.  Who's that at the door? Button, go and see. And Miss Wace must come at
once."

"Lady Viola would like to know if she may come and say good night to your
Grace."

"Oh, bother the child — well, yes, I suppose she must if she wants to. Now,
Button, haven't you nearly finished? Don't drag my hair back like that,
woman. Give me the tail comb. Don't you see, it wants more fullness at the
side. Really, Button, I thought you were supposed to be an expert
hairdresser.  You may think yourself lucky, Sebastian, that you were born a
boy.  This eternal hair, these eternal clothes! they wear a woman out before
her time.  Oh, there you are, Miss Wace.  This plan is all wrong — perfectly
hopeless.  I don't go in with Lord Roehampton at all.  What about the
ambassador?  You must alter it.  Do it in here, as quick as you can.
Sebastian will help you.  And Viola.  Come in, Viola; don't look so scared,
child; I can't bear people who look scared.  Now I must leave you all while I
wash.  No, I don't want you now, Button; you get on my nerves. I'll call you
when I want you. Get my dress ready. Children, help Miss Wace — yes, you too,
Viola; it's high time you took a little trouble to help your poor mother —
and do, all three of you, try to show a little intelligence."

The duchess retired into her dressing-room, from where she kept up a flow of
comments.

"Viola, you must really take a little more trouble about your appearance. You
looked a perfect fright at luncheon today; I was ashamed of you. And you
really must talk more, instead of sitting there like a stuffed doll. You had
that nice Mr. Anquetil, who is perfectly easy to get on with. You might be
ten, instead of seventeen. I have a good mind to start you coming down to
dinner, except that you would cast a blight over everything. Girls are such a
bore — poor things, they can't help it, but really they are a problem. They
ruin conversation; one has to be so careful. Women ought to be married, or at
any rate widowed. I don't mean you, of course, Wacey. I'm ready for you,
Button."

  [corsets: made of coutil = herringbone-patterned cloth used for corsets;
   tied together with a busk, rigid steel or bone pair, with hook and eye
   fastenings, in the front, and laces at the back.  Tulle is a kind of lace
   (after town in France).  Taffeta is a Persian word, for a fabric often
   made from silk.  Most of it comes today from South India. ]

Button vanished into the dressing-room, and for a while there was silence,
broken only by irritable exclamations from within. These inner mysteries of
his mother's toilet were unknown to Sebastian, but Viola knew well enough
what was going on: her mother was seated, poking at her hair meanwhile with
fretful but experienced fingers, while Button knelt before her, carefully
drawing the silk stockings on to her feet and smoothing them nicely up the
leg. Then her mother would rise, and, standing in her chemise, would allow
the maid to fit the long stays of pink coutil, heavily boned, round her hips
and slender figure, fastening the busk down the front, after many
adjustments; then the suspenders would be clipped to the stockings; then the
lacing would follow, beginning at the waist and travelling gradually up and
down, until the necessary proportions had been achieved. The silk laces and
their tags would fly out, under the maid's deft fingers, with the flick of a
skilled worker mending a net. Then the pads of pink satin would be brought,
and fastened into place on the hips and under the arms, still further to
accentuate the smallness of the waist. Then the drawers; and then the
petticoat would be spread into a ring on the floor, and Lucy would step into
it on her high-heeled shoes, allowing Button to draw it up and tie the
tapes. Then Button would throw the dressing-gown round her shoulders again —
Viola had followed the process well, for here the door opened, and the
duchess emerged. "Well, have you done that table? Read it out. Louder. I
can't hear. Yes, that's better. I'm sorry, Sebastian, you'll have to take in
old Octavia Hull again. Nonsense, she's very amusing when she's not too
fuddled with drugs. She'll be all right tonight because she'll be afraid of
losing too much money to Sir Adam after dinner. Now, Wacey, off you go and
rearrange the cards on the table. And you too, Viola. There are too many
people in this room. Oh, all right, you can stop till I'm dressed if you
like. -- Button, I'm ready for my dress. Now be careful. Don't catch the hooks
in my hair. Sebastian, you must turn round while I take off my
dressing-gown. Now, Button."

Button, gathering up the lovely mass of taffeta and tulle, held the bodice
open while the duchess flung off her wrap and dived gingerly into the billows
of her dress. Viola watched enraptured the sudden gleam of her mother's white
arms and shoulders. Button breathed a sigh of relief as she began doing up
the innumerable hooks at the back. But Lucy could not stand still for a
moment, and strayed all over the room with Button in pursuit,
hooking. "Haven't you finished yet, Button? Nonsense, it isn't tight. You'll
say next that I'm getting fat." Lucy was proud of her waist, which indeed was
tiny, and had changed since her girlish days only from eighteen to twenty
inches. "Only when your Grace stops," said Button apologetically, for Lucy
at the moment was bending forward and peering into her mirror as she puffed
the roll of her hair into a rounder shape. "There, then," said the duchess,
straightening herself, but reaching down stiffly for the largest of her
rubies, which she tried first against her shoulder, but finally pinned into a
knot at her waist. Then she encircled her throat with the high dog-collar of
rubies and diamonds, tied with a large bow of white tulle at the back. "You
must choose a wife who will do credit to the jewels, Sebastian," she said as
she slipped an ear-ring into its place, "because, of course, the day will
come when your poor old mother has to give up everything to her
daughter-in-law, and we shan't like that — eh, Button?" -— for she was in a
better humour now, again completely adorned and clothed —- "but we'll put up
with it for the joy of seeing a bride brought to Chevron —- eh, Button? eh,
Wacey? oh, no, of course Wacey has gone to do the table -— and you and I,
Button, will retire to the Dower House and live humbly for the rest of our
lives, and perhaps his Grace will ask us to the garden-party —- eh, Sebastian,
you rogue? -— will you, if your wife allows it?" Lucy was herself again,
adjusting her frock, clasping her bracelets, dusting her throat with
powder — for she was one of those who used powder, to the disapproval of her
elders —and everybody except Sebastian was radiant with re­sponsive
smiles. She flicked her handkerchief across Sebastian's lips. "Sulky boy! but
Sylvia Roehampton says you are even more attractive when you sulk than when
you are amiable, so I suppose I must believe her. Now Viola, my darling, I
must run. Kiss me good-night. Go straight to bed. Do I look nice?"

"Oh, mother, you look too lovely!"

"That's all right." Lucy liked as much admiration as she could get. ... Come
along, Sebastian. I shall want you to wait up for me, Button, of course. You
go in front, Sebastian, and open the doors. Dear, dear, how late you children
have made me. Sebastian, you must apologise to old Octavia at dinner, and
tell her it was all your fault. My fan, Button! good heavens, woman, what are
you there for? One has to think of everything for oneself."


e e cummings: may i feel said he

	may i feel said he
	(i'll squeal said she
	just once said he)
	it's fun said she

	(may i touch said he
	how much said she
	a lot said he)
	why not said she

	(let's go said he
	not too far said she
	what's too far said he
	where you are said she)

	may i stay said he
	which way said she
	like this said he
	if you kiss said she

	may i move said he
	is it love said she)
	if you're willing said he
	(but you're killing said she

	but it's life said he
	but your wife said she
	now said he)
	ow said she

	(tiptop said he
	don't stop said she
	oh no said he)
	go slow said she

	(cccome?said he
	ummm said she)
	you're divine!said he
	(you are Mine said she)


Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)

... all that love and joy and peace that flooded over me when I thought
about Vere, and how it all came from what was a deep meanness in our lives,
for that is what adultery is, a meanness and a stealing, a taking away from
someone what should be theirs, a great selfishness, and surrounded and
guarded by lies lest it should be found out.  And out of this meanness and
this selfishness and this lying flow love and joy and peace, beyond
anything that can be imagined.  And this makes a discord in the mind, the
happiness and the guild and the remorse pulling in opposite ways so that
the mind and sould are torn in two, and if it goes on for years and years
the discord becomes permanent, so that it will never stop...

Kingsley Amis: Nothing to Fear 27

All fixed: early arrival at the flat
Lent by a friend, whose note says Lucky sod;
Drinks on the tray, the cover-story pat
And quite uncheckable, her husband off
Somewhere with all the kids till six o'clock
(Which ought to be quite long enough);
And all worth while: face really beautiful,
Good legs and hips, and as for breasts - my God.
What about guilt, compunction and such stuff?
I've had my fill of all that cock;
It'll wear off, as usual.

Yes, all fixed.  Then why this slight trembling,
Dry mouth, quick pulse-rate, sweaty hands,
As though she were the first?  No, not impatience,
Nor fear of failure, thank you, Jack.
Beauty, they tell me, is a dangerous thing,
Whose touch will burn, but I'm asbestos, see?
All worth while -- it's a dead coincidence
That sitting here, a bag of glands
Tuned up to concert pitch, I seem to sense
A different style of caller at my back,
As cold as ice, but just as set on me.

Marguerite Duras : The train from Bordeaux, from Practicalities 400

I was sixteen years old. I still looked like a child. It was when we'd come
back from Saigon, after the Chinese lover. It was on a night train, the train
from Bordeaux, in about 1930. I was with my family – my two brothers and my
mother. We were in a third-class compartment with either seats in it, and I
think there were two or three other people besides us. There was also a young
man sitting opposite me and looking at me. He must have been about thirty. It
must have been in the summer. I was still wearing the sort of light-coloured
dress I used to wear in the colonies, with sandals and no stockings. The man
asked me about my family, and I told him about what it was like living in the
colonies: the rains, the heat, the veranda, how difference it was from
France, the walking in the forest, and the baccalauréat exam I was going to
take that year. That sort of thing – the usual kind of conversation you have
in a train when you pour out your own and your family’s life history.

And then all of a sudden we noticed everyone else was asleep. My mother and
brothers had dropped off soon after we left Bordeaux. I spoke quietly so as
not to wake them. If they’d heard me telling someone else all our business
their yells and threats would soon have put a stop to it. And our whispered
conversation had sent the other three or four passengers to sleep too. So
the man and I were the only two still awake. And that was how it started,
suddenly, at exactly the same moment, with a single look. In those days
people didn’t speak about such things, especially in circumstances like
that. All at once we couldn’t go on talking. We couldn’t go on looking at
one another either; we felt weak, shattered.

I was the one who said we ought to get some sleep so as not to be too tired
when we got to Paris in the morning. He was sitting near the door so he
switched out the light. There was an empty seat between us. I curled up on
it and closed my eyes. I heard him open the door. He went out and came back
with a blanket and spread it over me. I opened my eyes to smile and say
thank you. He said: ‘They turn off the heating at night and it gets cold
towards morning.’ I went to sleep. I was wakened by his warm soft hand on my
legs; very slowly it straightened them out and tried to move up towards my
body. I opened my eyes just a fraction. I could see he was looking at the
other people in the carriage, watching them; he was afraid. I very slowly
moved my body towards him and put my feet against him. I gave them to
him. He took them. With my eyes shut, I followed all his movements. They
were slow even at first, then more and more slow and controlled until the
final paroxysm of pleasure, as upsetting as if he’d cried out.

For a long while there was nothing except the noise of the train. It was
going faster and the noise was deafening. Then it became bearable again. He
put his hand on me. Distraught, still warm, afraid. I held it in mine for a
moment, then let it go, let it do as it liked.

The noise of the train came back again. The hand went away, stayed away for
some time. I don’t remember how long – I must have drowsed off.

Then it came back.

It stoked me all over first, then my breasts, stomach and hips, in a kind of
overall gentleness disturbed every so often by new stirrings of
desire. Sometimes it would stop. It halted over my sex, trembling, about to
take the bait, burning hot again. Then it moved on. Finally it resigned
itself, quieted down, became kind in order to bid the child goodbye. All
around the hand was the noise of the train. All around the train, the
darkness. The silence of the corridors within the noise of the train. The
stops, waking people up. He got off into the darkness. When I opened my eyes
in Paris his seat was empty.

Theodore Roethke: Gob Music 123

	I do not have a fiddle so
	   I get myself a stick,
	And then I beat upon a can,
	   Or pound upon a brick;
	And if the meter needs a change
	   I give the cat a kick.

	   Oomph dah doodle dah
	   Oomph dah doodle dah
	   Oomph dah doodle dah do.

	Whenever I find it coming on,
	   I need a morning drink,
	I get a stool and sit and stare
	   In the slop-pail by the sink;
	I lean my head near the brimming edge
	   And do not mind the stink.

	   Oh the slop-pail is the place to think
	   On the perils of too early drink,
	   Too early drink, too early drink,
	   Can bring a good man down.

		...

Anne Sexton: The Addict 140

	Sleepmonger,
	deathmonger,
	with capsules in my palms each night,
	eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles
	I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey.
	I'm the queen of this condition.
	I'm an expert on making the trip
	and now they say I'm an addict.
	Now they ask why.
	Why!

	Don't they know that I promised to die!
	I'm keping in practice.
	I'm merely staying in shape.
	The pills are a mother, but better,
	every color and as good as sour balls.
	I'm on a diet from death.

	Yes, I admit
	it has gotten to be a bit of a habit-
	blows eight at a time, socked in the eye,
	hauled away by the pink, the orange,
	the green and the white goodnights.
	I'm becoming something of a chemical
	mixture.
	that's it!

	My supply
	of tablets
	has got to last for years and years.
	I like them more than I like me.
	It's a kind of marriage.
	It's a kind of war where I plant bombs inside
	of myself.

	Yes
	I try
	to kill myself in small amounts,
	an innocuous occupatin.
	Actually I'm hung up on it.
	But remember I don't make too much noise.
	And frankly no one has to lug me out
	and I don't stand there in my winding sheet.
	I'm a little buttercup in my yellow nightie
	eating my eight loaves in a row
	and in a certain order as in
	the laying on of hands
	or the black sacrament.

	It's a ceremony
	but like any other sport
	it's full of rules.
	It's like a musical tennis match where
	my mouth keeps catching the ball.
	Then I lie on; my altar
	elevated by the eight chemical kisses.

	What a lay me down this is
	with two pink, two orange,
	two green, two white goodnights.
	Fee-fi-fo-fum-
	Now I'm borrowed.
	Now I'm numb.

		[After repeated attempts, american poet Anne Sexton (pulitzer
		1967) committed suicide in 1974]

Charles Baudelaire : Stoned


Many of those who are being initiated complain at first of the tedium; they
wait with futile impatience, and if the drug does not act swiftly enough,
they give sardonic satisfaction to Initiates by boasting that they are
impervious to the effects of Hashish.  The first signs of an approacing storm
appear and multiply.  In the early moments of getting stoned you are seized
by an outrageous hilarity, irresistible and ludicrous.  These motiveless fits
of hilarity, of which you feel ashamed, recur and destroy the placidity of
your stupor.  The most simple words and most trivial ideas assume bizarre and
fantastic shapes; you feel astonished not to have realised their simplicity
before.  ...  Soon your ideas become so vague, your mental conceptions so
strained, that only your accomplices can understand you... At the same time,
wisdom and sagacity, the measured thoughts of the unintoxicated, divert you
with their inanity.  It is all inverted.

George Woolliscroft Rhead: Sweet language of Fans 187

      (from A history of the Fan)
The fan has its own language, more eloquent than that of flowers - The
Spanish novia (lady love) communicates her thoughts by code to her novio
(sweetheart):

1. You have won my love. — Place the shut fan near the heart.

2. When may I be allowed to see you? — The shut fan resting upon the right
	eye.

3. At what hour?  The number of sticks of the fan indicate the hour.

4. I long always to be near thee. Touchthe unfolded fan in the act of
	waving.

5. Do not be so imprudent. Threaten with the shut fan.

6. Why do you misunderstand me? Gaze pensively at the unfolded fan.

7. You may kiss me. Press the half-opened fan to the lips.

8. Forgive me, I pray you. Clasp the hands under the open fan.

9. Do not betray our secret. Cover the left ear with the open fan.

10. _I promise to marry you.  Shut the full-opened fan very slowly.

And so on, through the whole gamut of the language of love.

Kenneth Rexroth: A Masseuse and Prostitute 347

	After midnight, the lesbians and fairies
	Sweep through the streets of the old tenderloin,
	Like spirochetes in a softening brain.
	The hustlers have all been run out of town.
	I look back on the times spent
	Talking with you about the idiocies
	Of a collapsing world and the brutalities
	Of my race and yours,
	While the sick, the perverted, the malformed,
	Came and went, and you cooked them,
	And rolled them, and beat them,
	And sent them away with a little taste
	Of electric life from the ends of your fingers.
	Who could ever forget your amiable body,
	Or your unruffled good sense,
	Or your smiling sex?
	I suppose your touch kept many men
	As sane as they could be kept.
	Every hour there is less of that touch in the world.

Contents

Adultery 1:
	Byron against constancy, Carol Ann Duffy's magnificient poem;
Alfresco Sex 42: Open air sex, pieces by Aphra Behn and Lorca;
 	Edmund Wilson, - at 60, makes love on the sand. Camilo Jose Cela
	about lovers who cavort in an the empty plot where children play in
	the daytime.
Cruelty 57  Bullfighters (James Salgado), and Gladiators (St Augustine)
Dancing 74
	No sober man dances, unless he is mad.  - Cicero
	These panting damsels, dancing for their lives / Are only maidens,
		waltizing into wives. - Anonymous
Dressing 87
	Vita Sackville West, Baudelaire on Dandyism
Drink 114
	'''Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but
	   it takes away the performance.  [Porter, in Macbeth, about drinking.]
	Also, the rather decadent Gob music by Theodore Roethk '''(1908-1963),
	   who lived a life of drink and excess.
	For Marguerite Duras living alone in a huge house at Neauphle,
	  alcohol "lends resonance to loneliness, and ends up making you
	  prefer it to everything.
Drugs 140 Anne Sexton's The Addict, Charles Dickens describing an Opium
	Den, Baudelaire on Hashish
Flirting 179
	Glances are the heavy artillery of the flirt: everything can be
	conveyed in a look, yet that look can always be denied, for it cannot
	be quoted word for word.  - Stendhal
Food 189:  Hunger is the cheapest sawce.  Sir Thomas Overbury (for more on
	him see Santillana's Age of Adventure.
Gambling 219
Gossip 255
	There is no rampart that will hold out against malice. - Moliere
Heavenly Vices 270
Hedonism 272
Lust 285
	Eros shakes my senses like a wind on the mountain shaking the oaks.
		- Sappho
	Allen Ginsberg's explicit gay poem: Please Master
Motoring 310
	Sinclair Lewis sketches Babbit's triumphant journey to office:
	"his motor-car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism"
Orgies 329
       Suetonius and Juvenal on Roman times; Hubert Selby on a swinging orgy
       in the iconoclastic "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (1964)
Prostitution 337
Reading 357
Schadenfreude 369
	I detest that dark, dismal mentality which skims over life's
	pleasures but fastens on misfortunes, and feeds off them; like flies
	which cannot grip on smooth, polished surfaces, and so cling to
	rough, jagged spots, or leeches that suck off only bad blood. -
	Michel de Montaigne
Scuzzy People 374
Seduction 391
	Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.  Natalie Barney
Shopping 403
Short Views on Mean Vices 426 [envy; flattering; lying, vanity, etc.]
Snobbery 431
	The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious
	ancestors is like a potato -- the only good belonging to him is
	underground. - Thomas Overbury
Solitary Vice 449
	John Cleland, on how Fanny Hill pleasures herself
Theatricals 460
	Every day, everywhere, it's on the rise.  The television malady.  THe
	set is dirty.  It's a household object now, an old pot, a kitchen
	sink, but old and dirty... You see their life-size heads, they
	stretch their necks, they look toward you, then you stand in front of
	them to block them, you turn it off.  They give us the same
	presumptuous, profoundly conniving smile.  They talk to us in the
	singular language that likewise presumes to be self-evident, with the
	same staggering force of conviction, the same postures, the same
	zoom, then hey go off in another vein to speak to you about France,
	about the quality of life, about the Olympic games...
	      - Marguerite Duras, Green eyes, tr. Carol Barko 1990
Tobacco 485
Le Vice Anglais 508  [birching, sadism]
	Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, from Venus in Furs, how he signs himself
	away to become a slave to Wanda
Vice and Virtue 518
	The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within.  Sir Thomas
	Browne
Voyeurism 532


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail.com) 2011 Jun 30