Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Cathy was a liar, but she did not lie the way most children do. Hers was no daydream lying, when the thing imagined is told and, to make it seem more real, told as real. That is just ordinary deviation from external reality. I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose that if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially profitable.
East of Eden
John Steinbeck
East of Eden
John Steinbeck
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one's fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered visable punishment for concealed sins.
And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of consience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people that find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a moster the norm must seem monsterous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without a consience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a moster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monterous.
East of Eden
John Stienbeck
And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of consience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people that find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a moster the norm must seem monsterous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without a consience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a moster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monterous.
East of Eden
John Stienbeck
Monday, June 07, 2004
The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot (1925)
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T. S. Eliot (1925)
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Monday, May 31, 2004
ethnography airfoil eyebrow
tea party toward is outer.When industrial complex living with reactor reads a magazine, toward hand daydreams.ribbon for seek insurance agent living with philosopher.A few brides, and fruit cake from ball bearing) to arrive at a state of cyprus mulchcup a change of heart about polar bear from.A few debutantes, and related to grain of sand) to arrive at a state of wheelbarrow
splotchy deprave emile defrock
~junk email porno poetry
tea party toward is outer.When industrial complex living with reactor reads a magazine, toward hand daydreams.ribbon for seek insurance agent living with philosopher.A few brides, and fruit cake from ball bearing) to arrive at a state of cyprus mulchcup a change of heart about polar bear from.A few debutantes, and related to grain of sand) to arrive at a state of wheelbarrow
splotchy deprave emile defrock
~junk email porno poetry
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
THE DISHONEST MAILMAN
They are taking all my letters, and they
put them into a fire.
I see the flames, etc.
But do not care, etc.
They burn everything I have, or what little
I have. I don't care, etc.
The poet supreme, addressed to
emptiness--this is the courage
necessary. This is something
quite different.
_______________________________________
CHASING THE BIRD
The sun sets unevenly and the people
go to bed.
The night has a thousand eyes.
The clouds are low, overhead.
Every night is a little bit
more difficult, a little
harder. My mind
to me a mangle is.
Both//Robert Creely.
They are taking all my letters, and they
put them into a fire.
But do not care, etc.
They burn everything I have, or what little
I have. I don't care, etc.
The poet supreme, addressed to
emptiness--this is the courage
necessary. This is something
quite different.
_______________________________________
CHASING THE BIRD
The sun sets unevenly and the people
go to bed.
The night has a thousand eyes.
The clouds are low, overhead.
Every night is a little bit
more difficult, a little
harder. My mind
to me a mangle is.
Both//Robert Creely.
Sunday, April 25, 2004
It seemed to Bruno as though [Michel] were barely listening. It was like talking to a wall, or a psychiatrist, but he talked nonetheless.
“For years my son turned to me for love and I rejected him. I was depressed, I hated my life, I thought there’d be a time when I felt better. I didn’t realize how quickly the years would go by. Between seven and twelve, a child is an astonishing being—kind, rational and open, full of joy and convinced that the world is a logical place. He’s full of love, and happy to accept what love we’re prepared to give. After that it all goes wrong—it all goes horribly wrong.”
Michel gobbled down the last two slices of salami and poured himself another glass of wine. His hands were trembling violently. Bruno continued: "There’s nothing more stupid, aggressive, hateful or obnoxious than a teenage boy, especially when he’s with boys his own age. He is a monster crossed with an imbecile. He’s unbelievably conformist—at puberty a boy is the sudden, malicious and unpredictable (considering the child he was) crystallization of the very worst in mankind. When you think about it, sexuality has to be an absolutely evil force. I don’t know how people can live under the same roof as kids like that. I think the only reason they can stomach it is because their lives are completely empty, though I suppose my life is completely empty and I didn’t manage it. In any case, the world is full of liars; people spend their lives telling appalling lies. ‘We’re divorced now, but we’re still good friends. I get to see my son every other weekend…’ That’s bullshit. Complete bullshit. In reality, men don’t give a damn about their kids, they never really love them. In fact, I’d say men aren’t capable of love; the emotion is completely alien to them. The only emotions they know are desire—in the form of pure animal lust—and male rivalry. There used to be a time when, late in life, a man would come to feel a certain affection for his spouse—though not before she’d borne his children, made a home for them, cooked, cleaned and proved herself in the bedroom. That sort of regard meant they enjoyed sleeping in the same bed. It was probably not what the women were looking for, and it might have even been a delusion—but it could be a powerful feeling. Strong enough that even if men still became excited—though to a decreasing degree—at getting a little piece of ass on the side from time to time, they literally could not live without their wives. When, out of unhappiness, their wives left them, they hit the bottle and died soon afterward—often in a matter of months. Children existed solely to inherit a man’s trade, his moral code and his property. This was taken for granted among the aristocracy, but merchants, craftsmen and peasants also bought into the idea, so it became the norm at every level of society. That’s all gone now: I work for someone else, I rent my apartment from someone else, there’s nothing for my son to inherit. I have no craft to teach him, I haven’t a clue what he might do when he’s older. By the time he grows up, the rules I lived by will have no value—he will live in another universe. If a man accepts the fact that everything must change, then he accepts that life is reduced to nothing more than the sum of his own experience; past and future generations mean nothing to him. That’s how we live now. For a man to bring a child into the world is now meaningless. Women are different, because they continue needing to have someone to love—which is not and has never been true of men. It’s bullshit to pretend that men need to fuss over their children, play with them or cuddle them. I know people have been saying it for years, but it’s bullshit. After divorce—once the family unit has broken down—a man’s relationship with his children is nonsensical. Kids are a trap that has closed, they are the enemy—you have to pay for them all your life—and they outlive you.”
Michel got up and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. He could see colored wheels spinning in midair, and felt like throwing up. First he had to stop his hands from shaking. Bruno was right—paternal love was a lie, a fiction. A lie is useful if it transforms reality, he thought, but if it fails, then all that’s left is the lie, the bitterness and the knowledge that it was a lie.
From The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houllebecq, Part 2, Ch 11.
“For years my son turned to me for love and I rejected him. I was depressed, I hated my life, I thought there’d be a time when I felt better. I didn’t realize how quickly the years would go by. Between seven and twelve, a child is an astonishing being—kind, rational and open, full of joy and convinced that the world is a logical place. He’s full of love, and happy to accept what love we’re prepared to give. After that it all goes wrong—it all goes horribly wrong.”
Michel gobbled down the last two slices of salami and poured himself another glass of wine. His hands were trembling violently. Bruno continued: "There’s nothing more stupid, aggressive, hateful or obnoxious than a teenage boy, especially when he’s with boys his own age. He is a monster crossed with an imbecile. He’s unbelievably conformist—at puberty a boy is the sudden, malicious and unpredictable (considering the child he was) crystallization of the very worst in mankind. When you think about it, sexuality has to be an absolutely evil force. I don’t know how people can live under the same roof as kids like that. I think the only reason they can stomach it is because their lives are completely empty, though I suppose my life is completely empty and I didn’t manage it. In any case, the world is full of liars; people spend their lives telling appalling lies. ‘We’re divorced now, but we’re still good friends. I get to see my son every other weekend…’ That’s bullshit. Complete bullshit. In reality, men don’t give a damn about their kids, they never really love them. In fact, I’d say men aren’t capable of love; the emotion is completely alien to them. The only emotions they know are desire—in the form of pure animal lust—and male rivalry. There used to be a time when, late in life, a man would come to feel a certain affection for his spouse—though not before she’d borne his children, made a home for them, cooked, cleaned and proved herself in the bedroom. That sort of regard meant they enjoyed sleeping in the same bed. It was probably not what the women were looking for, and it might have even been a delusion—but it could be a powerful feeling. Strong enough that even if men still became excited—though to a decreasing degree—at getting a little piece of ass on the side from time to time, they literally could not live without their wives. When, out of unhappiness, their wives left them, they hit the bottle and died soon afterward—often in a matter of months. Children existed solely to inherit a man’s trade, his moral code and his property. This was taken for granted among the aristocracy, but merchants, craftsmen and peasants also bought into the idea, so it became the norm at every level of society. That’s all gone now: I work for someone else, I rent my apartment from someone else, there’s nothing for my son to inherit. I have no craft to teach him, I haven’t a clue what he might do when he’s older. By the time he grows up, the rules I lived by will have no value—he will live in another universe. If a man accepts the fact that everything must change, then he accepts that life is reduced to nothing more than the sum of his own experience; past and future generations mean nothing to him. That’s how we live now. For a man to bring a child into the world is now meaningless. Women are different, because they continue needing to have someone to love—which is not and has never been true of men. It’s bullshit to pretend that men need to fuss over their children, play with them or cuddle them. I know people have been saying it for years, but it’s bullshit. After divorce—once the family unit has broken down—a man’s relationship with his children is nonsensical. Kids are a trap that has closed, they are the enemy—you have to pay for them all your life—and they outlive you.”
Michel got up and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. He could see colored wheels spinning in midair, and felt like throwing up. First he had to stop his hands from shaking. Bruno was right—paternal love was a lie, a fiction. A lie is useful if it transforms reality, he thought, but if it fails, then all that’s left is the lie, the bitterness and the knowledge that it was a lie.
From The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houllebecq, Part 2, Ch 11.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
“Abortion”
Your tickertape chatter
offers candy compliments on
my wit, my great good humor.
Your frozen words crack and smoke,
dry ice bouncing of these white walls
Your teeth grind out a seasick smile.
I know you mean well.
After all, you got the money.
you will leave these cool corridors
whispering to others how well I am taking it.
Someday you will marry a pleased virgin.
You will make the transition.
Inside I am scraped clean.
Oddly detached from your solicitous
grief, small waves of proud relief.
The jeering pain in my intestines
is far more real that your glazed eyes, your reassuring TV voice.
I am pure as the sea, a wounded
mermaid you may no longer touch.
I have eaten my young. Devoured by
a scalpel proxy for three green bills.
I have bought my own barrenness.
Beware my flesh. Beware.
Someday I will bear children.
The doctors say I need have no doubts.
But I will never be eaten again.
I am not digestible.
I will stick in your throat,
choke you like a fish bone.
I conjured wet stains on those antiseptic sheets. I will go home soon. Darling,
I will make you disintegrate.
My blood is dark red acid, and you,
my vampire who poured me this dead
life, you must drink it too.
M.Z. Ribalow
Your tickertape chatter
offers candy compliments on
my wit, my great good humor.
Your frozen words crack and smoke,
dry ice bouncing of these white walls
Your teeth grind out a seasick smile.
I know you mean well.
After all, you got the money.
you will leave these cool corridors
whispering to others how well I am taking it.
Someday you will marry a pleased virgin.
You will make the transition.
Inside I am scraped clean.
Oddly detached from your solicitous
grief, small waves of proud relief.
The jeering pain in my intestines
is far more real that your glazed eyes, your reassuring TV voice.
I am pure as the sea, a wounded
mermaid you may no longer touch.
I have eaten my young. Devoured by
a scalpel proxy for three green bills.
I have bought my own barrenness.
Beware my flesh. Beware.
Someday I will bear children.
The doctors say I need have no doubts.
But I will never be eaten again.
I am not digestible.
I will stick in your throat,
choke you like a fish bone.
I conjured wet stains on those antiseptic sheets. I will go home soon. Darling,
I will make you disintegrate.
My blood is dark red acid, and you,
my vampire who poured me this dead
life, you must drink it too.
M.Z. Ribalow
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
'I wish to speak to you now of a poor young girl whose name was Brigitte Bardot...At the time I knew her, in the bloom of her seventeen years, Brigitte Bardot was truly repulsive. First of all she was extremely fat, a porker and even a super-porker, with abundant rolls of fat gracelessly disposed at the intersections of her obese body. Yet had she followed a slimming diet of the most frightening severity for twenty-five years her fate would not have been markedly improved. Because her skin was blotchy, puffy, and acned. And her face was wide, flat and round, with little deep-set eyes, and straggly, lustreless hair. Indeed, the comparison with a sow forced itself on everyone in an inevitable and natural way.
She had no girlfriends, and obviously no boyfriends. She was therefore completely alone. Nobody addressed a word to her, not even during a physics test; they would always prefer to address themselves to someone else. She came to classes then returned home; never did I hear it said that someone might have seen her other than at school.
During classes certain people sat next to her; they got used to her massive presence. They didn't notice her and neither did they poke fun at her. She didn't participate in discussions in the philosophy class; she didn't participate in anything at all. She wouldn't have been more tranquil on the planet Mars.
I suppose her parents must have loved her. What would she do of an evening, after getting home? Because surely she must have had a room, with a bed, and some teddies dating from her childhood. She must have watched the telly with her parents. A dark room, and three beings united by the photonic flux; such is the image I have.
As for Sundays, I can well imagine the immediate family welcoming her with feigned cordiality. And her cousins, probably pretty. A depressing thought.
Did she have fantasies, and if so which? Romantic ones a la Barbara Cartland? I find it hard to believe that she might have somehow imagined, be it only in a dream, that a young man of good family pursuing his studies in medicine would one day nourish the prospect of taking her in his open-top car to visit the abbeys of the Normandy coast. Unless, perhaps, she were previously provident with a penitent's hood, so lending a mysterious edge to the adventure.
Her homonal mechanisms must have functioned normally, there's no reason to suppose otherwise. And then? Does that suffice for having erotic fantasies? Did she imagine masculine hands lingering between the folds of her obese belly? Descending as far as her sexual parts? I turn to medicine and medicine can afford me no answer. There are many things concerning Bardot I have not managed to elucidate. I have tried.
...
Goaded on by sexual liberation (it was right at the beginning of the 80s, AIDS still did not exist), she couldn't make appeal to some ethical notion of virginity, obviously. On top of that she was too intelligent and too lucid to account for her state as being a product of "Judeo-Christian influence" - in any case her parents were agnostics. All means of evasion were thus closed to her. She could only assist, in silent hatred, at the liberation of others; witness the boys pressing themselves like crabs against others' bodies; sense the relationships being formed, the experiments being undertaken, the orgasms surging forth; live to the full a silent self-destruction when faced with the flaunted pleasure of others. Thus was her adolescence to unfold, and thus it unfolded: jealousy and frustration fermented slowly to become a swelling of paroxystic hatred.
...
The desire for love is deep in man, it plunges its roots to astonishing depths, and the multiplicity of its radicles is intercalated in the very substance of the heart. Despite the avalanche of humiliations which made up her daily life, Brigitte Bardot waited and hoped. She is probably waiting and hoping still. In her situation a viper would already have committed suicide. Mankind is supremely self-confident.'
from Part Two, Chapter 7, of Michel Houellebecq's Whatever
***
"Without beauty a girl is unhappy because she has missed her chance to be loved. People do not jeer at her, they are not cruel to her, but it is as if she were invisible--no eyes follow her as she walks. People feel uncomfortable when they are with her. They find it easier to ignore her. A girl who is exceptionally beautiful, on the other hand, who has something that far surpasses the customary seductive freshness of adolescence, appears somehow unreal. Great beauty seems invariably to portend some tragic fate.
At fifteen, Annabelle was one of those rare beauties who can turn every man's head--regardless of age or physical fitness. She was one of the few who could send pulses racing in young and middle-aged alike and cause old men to groan with regret simply by walking down the street. She quickly noticed the silence that followed her appearance in a cafe or a classroom, but it would be years before she completely understood it...The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline."
From Part 1, Chapter 11, of Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles
She had no girlfriends, and obviously no boyfriends. She was therefore completely alone. Nobody addressed a word to her, not even during a physics test; they would always prefer to address themselves to someone else. She came to classes then returned home; never did I hear it said that someone might have seen her other than at school.
During classes certain people sat next to her; they got used to her massive presence. They didn't notice her and neither did they poke fun at her. She didn't participate in discussions in the philosophy class; she didn't participate in anything at all. She wouldn't have been more tranquil on the planet Mars.
I suppose her parents must have loved her. What would she do of an evening, after getting home? Because surely she must have had a room, with a bed, and some teddies dating from her childhood. She must have watched the telly with her parents. A dark room, and three beings united by the photonic flux; such is the image I have.
As for Sundays, I can well imagine the immediate family welcoming her with feigned cordiality. And her cousins, probably pretty. A depressing thought.
Did she have fantasies, and if so which? Romantic ones a la Barbara Cartland? I find it hard to believe that she might have somehow imagined, be it only in a dream, that a young man of good family pursuing his studies in medicine would one day nourish the prospect of taking her in his open-top car to visit the abbeys of the Normandy coast. Unless, perhaps, she were previously provident with a penitent's hood, so lending a mysterious edge to the adventure.
Her homonal mechanisms must have functioned normally, there's no reason to suppose otherwise. And then? Does that suffice for having erotic fantasies? Did she imagine masculine hands lingering between the folds of her obese belly? Descending as far as her sexual parts? I turn to medicine and medicine can afford me no answer. There are many things concerning Bardot I have not managed to elucidate. I have tried.
...
Goaded on by sexual liberation (it was right at the beginning of the 80s, AIDS still did not exist), she couldn't make appeal to some ethical notion of virginity, obviously. On top of that she was too intelligent and too lucid to account for her state as being a product of "Judeo-Christian influence" - in any case her parents were agnostics. All means of evasion were thus closed to her. She could only assist, in silent hatred, at the liberation of others; witness the boys pressing themselves like crabs against others' bodies; sense the relationships being formed, the experiments being undertaken, the orgasms surging forth; live to the full a silent self-destruction when faced with the flaunted pleasure of others. Thus was her adolescence to unfold, and thus it unfolded: jealousy and frustration fermented slowly to become a swelling of paroxystic hatred.
...
The desire for love is deep in man, it plunges its roots to astonishing depths, and the multiplicity of its radicles is intercalated in the very substance of the heart. Despite the avalanche of humiliations which made up her daily life, Brigitte Bardot waited and hoped. She is probably waiting and hoping still. In her situation a viper would already have committed suicide. Mankind is supremely self-confident.'
from Part Two, Chapter 7, of Michel Houellebecq's Whatever
***
"Without beauty a girl is unhappy because she has missed her chance to be loved. People do not jeer at her, they are not cruel to her, but it is as if she were invisible--no eyes follow her as she walks. People feel uncomfortable when they are with her. They find it easier to ignore her. A girl who is exceptionally beautiful, on the other hand, who has something that far surpasses the customary seductive freshness of adolescence, appears somehow unreal. Great beauty seems invariably to portend some tragic fate.
At fifteen, Annabelle was one of those rare beauties who can turn every man's head--regardless of age or physical fitness. She was one of the few who could send pulses racing in young and middle-aged alike and cause old men to groan with regret simply by walking down the street. She quickly noticed the silence that followed her appearance in a cafe or a classroom, but it would be years before she completely understood it...The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline."
From Part 1, Chapter 11, of Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles
