1921designs

[1921designs]

Topics

1. Some people believe the purpose of education should be helping the individual to become useful for society, while others believe it should help individuals to achieve their ambitions. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

2. Many people believe that a person’s culture is defined by their country of origin, while others believe that it has only minor influence. Discuss both these views and give your opinion.

3. More and more people are finding it increasingly important to wear fashionable clothes. Is this attitude to wearing clothes a positive development or negative?

4. The movement of people from villages to cities for work can cause serious problems in both places. What are the serious problems associated with this? What measures can be taken to solve these problems?

5. In the world of the internet, people write product reviews of products and services. Do you think this is a positive or negative development?

6. Some people prefer to buy local products while others prefer international products. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

7. Some believe that more action should be taken to prevent crime, while others feel that crime is being tackled effectively now. Discuss both sides and give your own opinion.

8. Some people say it is more important to plant trees in the open spaces in towns and cities than to build more housing. To what extant do you agree or disagree?

9. Some scientists think that computers will soon become more intelligent than humans.To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

10. Some people think that dangerous extreme sports such as rock climbing and sky-diving should be banned. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this view?

11. Young people are often influenced by their peers. Do the advantages of peer pressure outweigh the disadvantages?

12. Some people believe that nowadays too much money is being spent on weddings and birthdays. Why do you think it is happening? What can be done to improve the situation?

13. In many countries, the legal driving age is Some people believe it is the right age to learn how to drive a car, whereas others say that the minimum age should be Discuss both views and give your opinion.

14. Some people think that instead of preventing climate change, we need to find a way to live with it. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

15. Some people say that TV advertisements are helpful for viewers, while others disagree. What is your opinion?

16. Some people think the spread of multinational companies and globalization produce positive outcomes for everyone. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

17. In some countries, there are fewer young people who listen to or play classical music these days. Why is this? Should young people be encouraged to play or perform classical music?

18. Directors of large organizations earn much higher salaries than ordinary employees do. Some people think it is necessary, but others are of the opinion that it is unfair. Discuss both views and give your own opinions.

19. Prison is the common way in most countries try to solve the problem of crime. However, a more effective solution is to provide people with a better education. Do you agree or disagree?

20. Some think that climate change reforms will negatively affect business. Others feel they are an opportunity for businesses. Discuss both sides and give your own opinion.

21. Some people argue that holding sporting events is beneficial to a country's development. However, other people hold the opposite opinion. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

22. The first man to walk on the moon claimed it was a step forward for mankind. However, it has made little difference in most people’s lives. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

23. Some people think that good teamwork makes a company successful, others think that good leadership is the reason behind the success of a company. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

24. Some people think that it is a waste of time for high school students to study literature, such as novels and poems. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

25. In some countries the elderly are highly valued and respected, while in others youth is more highly valued. Discuss both sides and give your own opinion.

26. The personal information of many individuals is held by large internet companies and organisations. Do you think the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

27. Some people believe that handwriting is no longer useful in the modern world and should not be taught in schools. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

28. Some believe that advances in technology are increasing the gap between rich and poor while others think the opposite is happening. Discuss both sides and give your own opinion.

29. More and more people are finding it increasingly important to wear fashionable clothes. Is this attitude to wearing clothes a positive development or negative?

30. Some people believe that smart phones are destroying social interaction today. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

31. Some people believe that governments should ban dangerous sports. Others claim that they should have freedom to choose their favourite activities. Discuss both views and present your opinion.

32. Nowadays employment options are changing and employees cannot rely on having the same job and working conditions throughout their life. What are some possible causes? Suggest some ways to plan for the future under these circumstances.

33. Many companies sponsor sports as a way of advertising themselves. Some people think this is good for the world of sport, while others think it is negative. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

34. Governments in many countries have recently introduced special taxes on foods and beverages with high levels of sugar. Some think these taxes are a good idea while others disagree. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

35. Many people think technological devices such as smart phones, tablets and mobile phones bring more disadvantages than advantages. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

36. It is better for children if the whole family including aunts, uncles and grandparents are involved in a child’s upbringing, rather than just their parents. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

37. Most people prefer shopping in supermarkets nowadays. How does this affect the local shops? What are the positive and negative impacts of this development?

38. In many countries, fast food is becoming cheaper and more widely available. Do the disadvantages of this outweigh the advantages?

39. The government should lower the budget on the arts in order to allocate more money to education.To what extent do you agree?

40. Many people argue that eating junk food has led to an unhealthy lifestyle. This problem has become more common among young people these days. Do you agree or disagree that junk food is the cause of the issue?

41. Some people think that in order to produce a happy society, it is necessary to ensure that there is only a small difference between the earnings of the richest and poorest. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

42. The manufacturing and use of cars damages the environment but their popularity is increasing.Why is this happening? How could this be controlled?

43. Some people think that young people should go to university to further their education while others think they should be encouraged to work as car mechanics or builders etc.to serve society. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

44. Some people believe that to give opportunities to the new generation companies should encourage high level employees who are older than Do you agree or disagree?

45. Nowadays celebrities earn more money than politicians. What are the reasons for this? Is it a positive or negative development?

46. Many people believe that countries should produce food for the whole population and import as little food as possible. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

47. Some people think that it is necessary to travel abroad to learn about other countries, but others think that it is not necessary to travel abroad because all the information can be seen on TV and the internet. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

48. Why are some people who leave school early more successful compared with those who complete their studies. Provide reasons why they are more successful and what are the requirements for success?

49. Countries with long average working hours are economically more successful than those countries which do not work long hours. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

50. Many students around the world don’t choose science subjects at university. Give the reasons for this and describe the impact on the community?

51. It is better for young people to get advice from old people than young ones. Do you agree or disagree?

52. Some people think that music plays an important role in society. Others think it is simply a form of entertainment. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

53. Some people think that job satisfaction is more important than job security. Others think that people cannot expect to enjoy a job and that having a permanent job is more important. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

54. Some people say that technologies such as mobile phones are disrupting social interaction. Do you agree or disagree?

55. Some people think history has little or nothing to offer, while others say the study of the past helps us understand the present. Write on both views and give your opinion, citing examples from your experience

56. Some people think that zoos are cruel and all the zoos should be closed. However, others think that zoos are useful to protect rare animals. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

57. Some people think that the best way to stay fit is to join a gym/health club while others think doing everyday activities such as walking and climbing stairs is sufficient. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

58. Nowadays online shopping is extremely popular. Discuss the impact of it on the environment and on people who lost their jobs because of it.

59. Nowadays celebrities earn more money than politicians. What are the reasons for this? Is it a positive or negative development?

60. Many people think that every individual is responsible for their happiness, but some people believe there are other external factors that influence us. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

61. It is too expensive to look after and repair old buildings. This money should be spent on building modern buildings instead. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

62. Scientific research should be the responsibility of governments rather than commercial organizations. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

63. Some people believe that women should be treated as equal to men when applying for a job with police or the military. Others think women are less suitable for this kind of job. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

64. Some people prefer to work in the same type of job throughout their lifetime while others like to change the type of job they do. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

65. Some people think that it is fine for professional sportsmen and sportswomen to misbehave on or off the field, as long as they are playing well. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

66. People are becoming too dependent on the Internet and phone. Is it a positive or negative development?

67. Some people suggest that it is better for children to be brought up by the whole family including uncles, aunts and grandparents, rather than just the parents. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your opinion and examples.

68. Some people think that the government should increase tax on unhealthy food to encourage people to start eating healthy. Do you agree or disagree?

69. Nowadays, people are spending more time away from their homes because they spend longer in their workplace. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages.

70. What are the advantages and disadvantages for them and for their family?

71. Many parents complain about violence promoted to their children through video games, TV programs and other media. Why is it happening? What can be the solution for it?

72. Nowadays most people are not as fit and active, as they were in the past. What are the main causes of this situation? Suggest some possible solutions.

73. Nowadays, international tourism is the biggest industry in the world. Unfortunately, it creates tension rather than understanding between people from different cultures. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

74. Fossil fuels (e.g. coals, oil and gas) are the main source of energy for most countries. However, alternative sources of energy (e.g. wind and solar) have been encouraged for use by some countries. To what extent is this a positive or negative development?

75. Nowadays media should include more good news in their publications. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

76. Fossil fuels are the main source of energy around the world. However, people are being encouraged to use alternative energy sources such as wind energy, solar energy and so on. Do you think this is a positive or negative development? Why?

77. Some people believe that elderly employees are more useful to a company, while others believe that young employees are better. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

78. The number of older people is increasing. Some people think that this will cause problems in their countries, others believe this group is important to society. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

79. Some think that teenagers should follow older people’s rules. Others thinks that it is natural for them to challenge what older people say. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

80. Television Sporting shows such as the Olympics motivatethe youth who do not like to exercise much. Do you agree or disagree? Include relevant examples in your answer and provide your own opinion.

81. Nowadays many people want to buy famous brands of clothes, cars and other items. What are the reasons for this? Do you think it is a positive or a negative development?

82. More people live alone today than they did in the past. Do you think this is a positive or negative development? Give your opinion and relevant examples to support your view.

83. Some people believe that price is the only consideration when buying something. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your opinion and include relevant examples.

84. Some people believe that educational success depends on good teachers, while others believe that students’ attitudes are important. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

85. People in the current generation are not fit and active. This will cause health problems in the future. What could be the reasons for the inactivity and suggest solutions for this issue.

86. Parents, usually mothers, stay at home to look after their families. People believe that for this they should receive a salary from the government. Do you agree or disagree and why?

87. Some people think that they can go to the gym to remain fit, while others think that there are other better ways to do this. Discuss both views along with your opinion.

88. Some people say companies should require all employees to wear uniforms at work. Others think it is unnecessary. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

89. Because of modern technology, some people believe that it is no longer necessary for people to learn handwriting skills, but others believe that handwriting is still an important skill. Discuss both views and give your opinion based on your experience.

90. Nowadays many people work from home. Some think it is beneficial, while others think it may distract the family routine. What is your opinion?

91. It is necessary for parents to attend a parenting training course to bring their children up. Do you agree or disagree?

92. Nowadays people work too hard. What is the reason for this? What should employers do to prevent employees from over working?

93. Nowadays people get married and have children after the age of Is it a positive or negative development?

94. Today, some young people say that their mobile phones are the most important thing they own. Do you think that the popularity of mobile phones is a good or bad thing?

95. Nowadays, people believe that governments should invest tax-payer’s money in healthcare, others believe that money should be use in other areas. Discuss both points of view and give your opinion.

96. Adults do less exercise nowadays. Some think that people can be encouraged to live healthy lives through sporting events such as the Olympics or the World Cup. Others think that there are better ways to encourage adults for exercise. Discuss both views and state your opinion.

97. Modern cultures around the world have become similar when compared to the past. What are the reasons? Is it a positive or negative development?

98. People are using a lot of online language translation apps. Are there more advantages than disadvantages to such services.

99. Demand for food is increasing worldwide. What is the cause of this? What measures can the international community take to meet this demand?

100. Many companies sponsor sports as a way of advertising themselves. Some people think that this is a good thing, while others think that it has disadvantages. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

101. Some people believe that to be successful at a sport you need natural ability and others think that hard work and practice can make you successful. Discuss both views and give your opinion?

102. Nowadays, adults do little exercise. Some people believe that the best way to address this issue is by covering great sports events such as the Olympics n television. Others think that it is more beneficial to take other measures. What is your opinion?

103. These days some people spend a lot of money on tickets to go to sporting or cultural events. Do you think this is a positive or negative development?

104. Some people believe that technology has made man more social and others think that it has made him less social. Discuss both views and give your opinion?

105. Experts say older people were happier and healthier in the past because they did more exercise and spent more time with family and friends, whereas many now suffer from loneliness and health problems. What are the causes of this and what are some solutions?

106. Some people believe that to be successful at a sport you need a natural ability and others think that hard work and practice can make you successful. Discuss both views and give your opinion?

107. Some people believe that there will be a reduction in air travel in the future. Do you think that this trend is a positive or negative development?

108. Some people believe that technology has made man more sociable and others think that it has made us less sociable. Discuss both views and give your opinion?

109. At the present time, the population of some countries includes a relatively large number of young adults, compared with the number of older people. Do you think that the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

110. Some people believe that it is important to give gifts to friends and family to show that we care about them. Others think that there are better ways to show that we care. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

111. Today much of the food people eat gets transported from farms that are thousands of miles away. Some people believe it would be better for the environment and the economy if people only consumed food produced by local farmers. Would the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

112. With internet improvements, people can share views or opinions on certain goods or services that they have purchased. Is this a good or a bad thing? Discuss both views and give your opinion.

113. The qualities and skills that a person requires to become successful in today’s world cannot be learned at a university or any other academic institution. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

114. Shopping has become a new favourite pastime for younger generation. Why is this the case? Should we encourage them to develop other hobbies too?

115. Courses and general online study have recently become very popular. However, some people still prefer to attend classes in person. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

116. Some people think that prison sentences should not be used to deal with criminals. Education and skills training should be used instead. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

117. It is often said that it is not necessary to have a tertiary education to become a successful businessman. To what extent to you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your opinion and relevant examples.

118. Today it is common practice for many business meetings and business training to take place online. Do the advantages of this new development outweigh the disadvantages?

119. Nowadays, internet and television have given ordinary people a chance to become famous. Is this a positive or negative development?

120. Some people from poor and rural backgrounds find it difficult to get a university education. Universities should make it easier for such groups to enrol. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

121. Some people think that it is the responsibility of governments to take care of the environment, while others believe that it is the responsibility of the citizens. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

122. Many people believe that family has a greater influence on a child’s life and development than other factors, such as friends, TV, music and so on. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

123. Science can now offer people a life expectancy of close to one hundred years or even more. Some people view it in a positive light, but others believe it creates some problems. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

124. These days, many people prefer ready to eat food outside of their home rather than homemade food. Do you think this has more advantages or disadvantages?

125. Certain personal qualities cannot be achieved through university studies. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your opinion and relevant examples.

126. In some countries the quality of life in larger cities is declining. Why do you think this is happening? What measures can be taken to stop it?

127. Shopping is now one of the most popular forms of leisure activity in many countries for young adults. What do you think is the reason for this? Is this a positive or negative development?

128. In many countries, people are living in a “throwaway society” where things are used for a short time and thrown away. What are the causes of this and what problems does it lead to?

129. In some countries, people follow the latest fashion and hairstyles. In your opinion, what is influencing this? Do you think this is a positive or a negative development?

130. In some countries, children under Is this a good or bad thing? Discuss your opinion.

131. Nowadays, people have adopted an unhealthy lifestyle. Why do think this is? How could this problem be solved?

132. Some young people are leaving the countryside to live in cities and towns, leaving only old people in the countryside. Why do think this is? Do you think this is a positive or a negative development?

133. In many countries, people have more health problems because they choose to live an unhealthy lifestyle. What do you think are the reasons for this and how can it be solved? Give relevant examples from your experience.

134. Countries with a long average working time are more economically successful than those countries which do not have a long working time. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

135. Nowadays, people of all ages from certain parts of the world spend most time at home rather than going outdoors. Discuss the reasons, is this negative or positive development?

136. With the development of technology and science, some people believe that there is no great value of artists such as musicians and painters. What are the things artists can do but the scientist cannot? Should art be encouraged more?

137. While recruiting a new employee, the employer should pay more attention to their personal qualities, rather than qualifications and experience. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give your opinion and include relevant examples.

138. Money should be spent on creating new public buildings such as museums or town halls rather than renovating the existing ones. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

139. All the people in a company should be treated equally and provided with the same number of holidays in a year or people doing different jobs enjoy different amount of holiday time. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

140. Some people say that a person's success is as a result of the way he has been brought up by his parents. Do you agree or disagree?

141. Public celebrations (such as national days, festivals etc) are held in most countries. These are often quite expensive and some people say that governments should spend money on more useful things. Do you agree or disagree?

142. Some people prefer to buy local products while others prefer international products. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

143. Some people say that children given pocket money every week will have lesser money problems when they become adults. Do you agree or disagree?

144. The global demand for oil and gas is increasing. Some people believe that we should therefore encourage the exploitation of remote areas. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?

145. Today, many big cities in the world are increasing in size. What are the problems associated with it? What are the solution to these problems?

146. Some young people are leaving countryside to live in cities or towns, it leaves only old people in countryside. What are the problems of this issue? What can be done to solve this problem?

147. Many people believe that learning a foreign language is a very difficult task. What are the most difficult things about learning a foreign language? What is the best way to overcome them? Explain and include your personal experience or knowledge of these problems.

148. Some people think high-end technology can prevent and cut down the rate of committing crime. Do you agree or disagree?

149. Some people feel that courses can make anyone a teacher, while others feel an excellent teacher cannot be made by pursuing a course. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

150. Some people think that high salary is important when choosing a company to work for, while others think that good working atmosphere is more important. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

151. Some people encourage young children to leave their parents house as soon as they become adults while other say children should stay at their parents house as long as possible. Discuss both the views and give your opinion.

152. Many countries thought that children have to do homework in their free time while other say children should do more outdoor activity. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

153. Some people say that art subjects such as music, drama and creative writing are an essential part of education, and every school should include them in its syllabus. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your opinion and examples from your own experience.

154. Nowadays in many countries women have full time jobs. Therefore, it is logical to share household tasks evenly between men and women. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

155. Some people think that public health within a country can be improved by government making laws regarding nutritious food. Others, however, think that health is a matter of personal choice and responsibility. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

156. Many people believe that learning a foreign language is a very difficult task. What are the most difficult things about learning a foreign language? What is the best way to overcome them? Explain and include your personal experience or knowledge of these problems.

157. Some people believe that construction of new public buildings such as museums, town halls and sporting facilities is more important than renovation of the existing ones, while others disagree. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

158. Nowadays the crime rate is increasing, especially among teenagers. What are the reasons behind it? How can we reverse this trend? What punishment methods should be used, in your opinion?

159. Nowadays online education has become popular as more institutes and companies are offering courses online. However, many people prefer the traditional, classroom training or study. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both methods.

160. Some people believe that the government should take care of old people and provide financial support after they retire. Others say individuals should save during their working years to fund their own retirement. What is your opinion? Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your own experience.

161. In some cultures old people are valued more, while in other cultures youth is considered more valuable. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

162. Some people say that art subjects such as music, drama and creative writing are an essential part of education, and every school should include them in its syllabus. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your opinion and examples from your own experience.

163. Nowadays people waste a lot of food that was bought from shops and restaurants. Why do you think people waste food? What can be done to reduce the amount of food they throw away?

164. Writing task In today’s times internet is making it easy to study online from home. Some prefer online courses to study and they think it is better. Others prefer classroom education. Discuss both views and share your opinion.

165. Successful companies use advertising to make more sales. What can make an advertisement very effective? Do you think this is a bad thing or a good thing for the society?

166. Science will soon make people live up to Some believe this is a good thing while others disagree. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

167. Some people believe that after hundred years life will be easier for most of people, while the others are unsure. What is your opinion?

168. Some people think it is important to spend a lot of money on a wedding celebration, while others disagree. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

169. Some people think that giving gifts and presents to friends and family is important to show them that we care. Others think that there are more important ways. Discuss both and give your opinion.

170. The media is increasing interest in famous people who have ordinary backgrounds. Why do you think people are interested in the lives of famous people? Do you think this is a good thing?

171. Some people prefer activities and lifestyle in hot climates while others prefer activities and lifestyle in cold climate. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

172. Online education and training is becoming increasingly popular in the business world. Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

173. More and more parents are allowing their children to play on computers and tablets as they think that children should learn technology skills. Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

174. People are living in a 'throwaway society', using things for a short time and then throwing them away. What are the causes of this? What problems does it lead to?

175. Nowadays children mostly spend time playing computer games rather than sports. What are the reasons for this? Is it a positive or a negative development?

176. Scientists agree that many people eat too much junk food and it is damaging their health. Some people think that this problem can be solved by educating people, while others believe that education will not work. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

177. Many people believe that TV news and media in general have a detrimental effect on our life. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your own opinion, including relevant examples.

178. Many famous athletes advertise different products. What are the advantages and disadvantages of it?

179. Nowadays people try to balance their work with other things in life, but only some could actually achieve it so far. What are the reasons for that? How can we solve this problem?

180. Some people say that online study is the most effective and convenient way to learn. Others believe that online study will never be as effective as learning at school, in person. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

181. Children and teenagers are committing more and more crimes in many countries. Why is this happening? How can we stop or at least reduce youth crime?

182. Some people prefer cold weather conditions, while others don’t. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

183. Some people think subjects taught in school are a waste of time, while others disagree and believe that this type of education is useful for students. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

184. Some people think that the only way to relax is rest or sleep, while others say people need to do exercise or sport to relax. Discuss both view points and give your own opinion.

185. Some parents and teachers think that children’s behaviour should be strictly controlled. While some think that children should be free to behave. Discuss both the views and give your opinion.

186. In many countries day by day rubbish (garbage) is increasing. Why is it happening? What can be done?

187. Some people see shopping as a leisure activity mostly for young adults, while others disagree. Do you think this has a positive or negative effect on economic development? Give your opinion and include relevant examples.

188. Shopping has become a favorite pastime among young people. What do you think it is like that? Do you think they must be encouraged to do other things rather than shopping?

189. Some people think that the main factors influencing a child’s development these days are things such as television, friends, and music. Others believe that the family still remains more important. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

190. Food travels thousands of miles from producers to consumers. Some people think that it would be better for the environment and economy if people only ate the local food produced by farmers. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

191. Some people argue that the fittest, strongest individuals and teams can achieve the greatest success in sports. But other people think that success is as much related to mental attitude. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

192. Some people become famous when they are at a young age. Do you think this is positive or negative?

193. Some people believe it is important to give gifts and presents to friends and family to show that we care about them. Others think that there are better ways to show affection to them. Discuss both the views and give your own opinion.

194. Many people believe that spending a lot of money on weddings is fine, while others completely disagree. Discuss both views and give your own opinion and examples.

195. Many people believe the government should spend money on faster public transport. Others think that money should be spent on different aspects of public transportation, such as cost reduction and environment conservation. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

196. Some people believe that manufacturers should be responsible for reducing the large amounts of packaging they use. Others say consumers should avoid buying heavily packaged items. Discuss both views and state your opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your experience.

197. Some people think that family has the most important influence on children’s development, while others believe that factors such as TV, friends, music and books have a more significant impact. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

198. Task Today, most people get married and give birth in their thirties rather than when they are younger. Is this a positive or negative development?

199. Shops should give preference in selling local food rather than imported food. Do you agree or disagree?

200. Growing population is a big problem in developing countries. Should the government provide new homes in the cities or countryside?

201. Some people think that the media (newspapers) have the right to publish details of people’s private lives, while others think it should be controlled. Discuss both views.

202. Some people think that activities during the free-time should be planned while others disagree. Discuss both sides and include examples and relevant data from your own experience.

203. In some countries an increasing number of people are suffering from health problems as a result of eating too much fast food. It is therefore necessary for governments to impose a higher tax on this kind of food? To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion? You should use your own ideas, knowledge and experience and support your arguments with examples and relevant evidence.

204. Today more people are overweight than ever before. What in your opinion are the primary causes of this? What measures can be taken to overcome this epidemic?

205. In most parts of the world people are living longer. What are the possible causes of this situation? Is this a negative or positive development?

206. Today, the internet and TV have created that chance for ordinary people to become famous. Is it a positive or negative development?

207. Nowadays food has become easier to prepare. Has this change improved the way people live? Give reasons for your answer using your own ideas and experience.

208. Nowadays many people believe that children should be taught history in schools, however, others argue that children should learn subjects that are more helpful for modern everyday life. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

209. Some parents believe that a child should not waste time by reading entertainment books, instead they should spend time to read educational books only. What is your opinion about this?

210. Some people think that young children need to attend nursery before primary school. While others believe young children can spend all day at home. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

211. Some people believe school children should be given multiple short vacations while others believe they should get one long vacation. Give advantages of both and your point of view.

212. Some people think that the advantages of advertising sports products through famous sports players outweigh the disadvantages. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

213. In our society, there is far more attention on men's sport than women's sport. What are the reasons for this? Do you think that this is positive or negative development?

214. It has been said that reading for pleasure is better in developing imagination and language skills than watching TV. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

215. Advertisements are influencing us in a negative way. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

216. School teachers are more responsible for the social and intellectual development of students than parents. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

217. Some people spend a lot of money for their wedding ceremonies. However, others feel like it is unnecessary to spend a lot. Discuss both view points and give your own opinion.

218. Since traveling abroad became relatively inexpensive, more countries opened their doors for foreign tourists. Is it a positive or negative trend? Give your opinion and include relevant examples.

219. Many countries consider eighteen year olds to be adults, while other countries don’t. What do you think about it? Give your opinion and some relevant examples based on your own experience.

220. Writing task Some people think that the only way to judge someone’s success in business is by the amount of money they make. Is this a true indicator of the success of a business and in what other ways could success in a business be measured?

221. The restoration of old buildings in major cities around the world costs enormous amounts of money. This money would be better spent on providing new housing and road development. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?

222. Employers should give their workers at least one month holiday a year as it makes them to do better at their job. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

223. Some people believe the Olympic Games doesn't belong to the To what extent do you agree or disagree?

224. Some parents believe that reading books for entertainment is a waste of time for children and they think that their children should only read serious educational books. What is your opinion?

225. Some people think that an advertising on TV is useless and others disagree. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

226. Some people think money is the best gift to give it to youngsters, while others disagree. Discuss both the views and give your opinion.

227. For school children, their teachers have more influence on their intelligence and social development than their parents. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

228. In the modern world it is possible to shop, work and communicate with people via the internet and live without any face-to-face contact with others. Is it a positive or negative development in your opinion? To what extent do you support this development?

229. Many university students live with their families, while others live away from home because their universities are in different places. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both situations?

230. In the modern world it is no longer necessary to use animals for food, clothing or medicine. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your own experience.

231. Some businesses observe that new employees who just graduated from a college or university seem to lack interpersonal skills needed for communication with their colleagues. What could be the reason for this? What solutions can help address this problem?

232. Some people believe that we should start giving formal education to students at a much earlier age, while others think we should wait until the age of To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Discuss and give reasons for your answer.

233. Nowadays in many countries young people leave rural areas to study or work in cities. What are the reasons for this? Do the benefits of this outweigh the disadvantages?

234. Some parents believe that reading entertainment books is a waste of time. In their opinion, children should only read serious, educational books. Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include relevant examples from your own experience.

235. Nowadays there is a growing trend of private car ownership. Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages or environmental problems associated with this?

236. Some people believe that companies should pay for damage they cause to the environment, while others say that the government should be responsible for such expenses. Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your experience.

237. Nowadays there are many medical surveys of treatments to reduce health problems. Who should conduct them, governments, individuals or private companies, in your opinion? Give reasons for your answer and include relevant examples from your experience.

238. The international community must act immediately to ensure that all countries reduce their consumption of fossil fuels such as gas, oil and coal. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your own opinion.

239. Writing task For school children, their teachers have more influence on their intelligence and social development than their parents. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

240. Many people believe that it is a good idea to have a dress code at workplaces. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your opinion and examples from your own experience.

241. Some think that private companies should pay for pollution clean up, while others say it should be a government’s responsibility. Discuss, and state your own opinion.

242. Many people think that more having more money will make them happier. How important is money to happiness?

243. Many people believe that the use of new technology improves the lives of employees. Others think it is a disadvantage for them. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

244. Some people say that sport is very important for a nation’s development, while others believe that sport is no more than a leisure time activity. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

245. Some people think that children should start school sooner while others believe they should not start it before the age of seven. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

246. Some people argue that competitive sports are good for bringing together different people and cultures. Others argue that these sports can cause problems and increase conflicts between nations. Discuss both points of view and give your own opinion.

247. In some countries, it is illegal for employers to reject job applications on the basis of age criteria. Is it a positive or negative development? Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your own experience.

248. Many young people regularly change their jobs over the years. What are the reasons for this? Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

249. Some people think that new technologies benefit the life of workers whereas some deny the statement. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

250. Scientists agree that many people are eating too much junk food and it is damaging to their health. Some people think that these problems can be solved by educating people to eat less junk food. Other people believe that education will not work.

251. Discuss both opinions and give your own opinion.

252. Some people think that companies and private individuals should pay to clean up the pollution that they produce, not the government. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

253. As more and more students enter universities, academic qualifications are becoming devalued. To get ahead in many professions, more than one degree is now required and in future, it is likely that people will take a number of degree courses before even starting work. This is an undesirable situation. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

254. Many people are involved in sports when they are young but stop once they are adults. Why do many adults stop doing physical exercise? What can be done about this problem?

255. Some people think that it is a good idea for all employees to wear a uniform at work. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

256. Other people believe that it results in disadvantages for workers. Discuss both opinions and give your own opinion.

257. Some people think that international competitive sports such as football bring conflict between people of different age groups and nationalities. Others think the sport is helping reach understanding between people and nations. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

258. Some people think that only staff who worked in the company for a long time should be promoted to higher positions. What is your opinion on this? Give reasons and relevant examples for your answer.

259. Some people think it’s a good idea to wear a uniform at work. Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer with relevant examples from knowledge or experience.

260. Some people think it is more important to spend time in developing a successful career while others think it is more important to spend time with friends and family. Discuss both sides and give your opinion.

261. There is less social contact between young and old. What are the reasons? What measures can be taken?

262. Latest writing task Do you agree with the following statement: home schooling protects students from a number of challenges faced by non-home-schooled children?

263. Does distant learning make it easier for students to balance their everyday lives? Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

264. The best way to reduce crime among young people is to teach parents good parenting skills. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement? Give your own opinion and examples.

265. Some psychologists think that the best way to overcome stress of everyday life is to spend a portion of the day doing absolutely nothing. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

266. There is a trend of increasing amounts of consumer goods, which leads to environmental problems. What are the reasons for this trend? Give your own opinion and solutions.

267. The difference in age between parents and their children has increased compared to the past. Do you think advantages of this trend outweigh the disadvantages?

268. Scientists have been warning for many years already that in order to protect the environment people should use less energy. However, most people do not change their ways of living. What is causing this behaviour? How can people be encouraged to change?

269. Some people think that children should go to kindergarten before attending primary school, while others believe that is better for children to stay all day with their families. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

270. Some people believe that trade and cultural relationships between the countries is a positive development, while others disagree. Discuss both the views and include your own opinion.

271. Recently there are more gas stations being built as opposed to diesel ones in rural areas. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this trend?

272. Many parents (mostly women) decide to stay home and take care of the family members instead of going out for work. Some people suggest that they should be paid by the government for doing that. Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include examples from your own experience.

273. Different cultures are mixing today and the world is becoming a global village. Is it a positive or a negative development? Give your own opinion and examples.

274. Nowadays people’s life is changing rapidly and, as a result, family relationships are affected. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages? Give your opinion and examples from your own experience.

275. Measures have been put in place to improve road safety by reducing the speed limits. Some people believe there are better alternatives. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

276. Some people think that the range of technology available to people is increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. Others think it has an opposite effect. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

277. Some of the methods used in advertising are unethical and unacceptable in today's society. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

278. People nowadays are not as fit and active as they were in the past. What are the reasons for this? What measures can be taken for this?

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Netflix v Modi and the battle for Indian cinema’s soul Streaming platforms gave Indian filmmakers newfound freedoms, which are now under threat from Modi's government.

📷MAX-O-MATIC

bySonia Faleiroarchive page March 24, 2021

One afternoon before the pandemic, I went to a decommissioned hospital in West London to meet the Hindi film director Anurag Kashyap on the set of his new Netflix production. The old maternity unit where he was filming had never been entirely cleared out. Members of his crew, recently arrived from Mumbai, were maneuvering around vestigial baby cots and gurneys. As an assistant director shouted out instructions in Hindi and English, Kashyap had a word with his lead actress, who was lying supine on a bed in a blue hospital gown. The actress, a former model with hooded eyes and high cheekbones, nodded without changing her position. Then, just as unobtrusively, Kashyap made his way behind the monitor.Kashyap has developed a cult following in India since his first Hindi film, Paanch (Five), was banned for extreme violence in 2003. He has written, directed, and produced dozens of films for Bollywood. When Netflix launched in India in 2016, it hired Kashyap to co-direct its first original series, Sacred Games, about an underworld don in Mumbai who ensnares an upright police officer. As soon as Season 1 landed, it was obvious that the platform had a superhit on its hands.The series, based on a novel by Vikram Chandra, a popular Indian novelist who now lives in Berkeley, California, starred A-list Hindi film actors. Since streaming services weren’t, at the time, subject to the rules of India’s Central Board of Film Certification, Kashyap was able to transcend the grammar of Bollywood. His characters engaged with each other naturally—they swore, they talked politics, they had sex. To viewers exhausted by the predictable spectacles of Bollywood song and dance, Sacred Games was a thrill. The series marked the first time that streaming in India became more than just another source of light entertainment, like YouTube, or a vehicle for international shows.📷Anurag Kashyap plays himself in the 2020 film AK vs AK.ISHIKA MOHAN MOTWANE / © NETFLIX / COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION Netflix was so pleased, Kashyap told me, that it gave him a bonus. “That’s why I can buy new shoes!” he said with a laugh, gesturing at his fresh high-tops with the tip of his cigarette. India is often described as the world’s largest democracy, but freedom of expression has never existed there as it does in the West. To Kashyap, Netflix represented a promise not only of wealth but, more important, of liberty.This promise is important not just to Kashyap and other filmmakers, but to the 1.4 billion people living in India. Well-resourced cinema and television that can grapple with the issues of the day matter to the culture of a nation. Netflix represents a threat to the conservative, Hindu-nationalist worldview of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose government has recently renewed a campaign of censorship and intimidation against Kashyap and others like him. The rise of Netflix in India is a story of why technology matters: not as an end in itself, but as a means of artistic—and human—flourishing.The censorship of Indian films began in 1918, when the British set out to protect prudish Victorian social norms along with colonial interests. They objected both to the “unnecessary exhibition of feminine underclothing” and to “subjects dealing with India, in which British or Indian officers are seen in an odious light,” according to journalist Uday Bhatia. By 1920 India had several regional censor boards, whose members were told to be watchful for “sensitive issues” and “forbidden scenes,” writes Someswar Bhowmik. By the 1940s, kissing had all but disappeared from movies. Independence changed the nature of this repression but did not eliminate it. The press and cinema continued to be censored, most stringently from 1975 to 1977, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties for a 21-month period. After Gandhi was voted out in 1977, a period of relative openness followed.The climate changed again in 1996, when Hindu nationalists objected to Canadian director Deepa Mehta’s film Fire, which portrays a lesbian relationship. The film was approved by the censors,

but mobs defaced public property, thrashed people, and threw Molotov cocktails. Cinema owners canceled most screenings. Thereafter Bollywood stuck to a script: action, romance, and some tears, all wrapped in music and dance performances. The censor board focused on kissing, so filmmakers found other ways to attract audiences. “Why do you think we have so much vulgarity, songs, dances, pelvic thrusts, bathroom fantasies, and dream sequences?” one director asked in 2002. “Because you won’t allow a simple kiss.” The censor board was appeased, and so were conservative activist groups, and a winning formula was born. Although there were occasional exceptions, the world’s largest film industry settled into a rut.📷Director Deepa Mehta, on set of the 2006 film Water, the final film in her Elements trilogy.FOX SEARCHLIGHT/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014 when his party, the BJP, prevailed in a landslide. Much of the international press initially greeted Modi with cautious optimism. The New York Times editorial board said at the time that his victory had given him a chance “to revitalize the economy and shape the way India engages with the world.” Netflix and other streaming services posed a test to Modi. They were not subject to the same legacy censorship regime as broadcast television or cinema. They were well financed. For a time, an artistic renaissance catalyzed by technological change seemed possible.By 2015, Netflix’s profits in the US had fallen by 50%from the previous year. It was losing subscribers to rivals like Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, and the American and Western European markets had neared saturation. So Reed Hastings, Netflix’s head, looked to Asia. China was vast and relatively well-off, but largely closed to foreign firms. Japan was wealthy and more open, but relatively small; the company opened an office there, but the upside was limited. India was big, like China, but its infrastructure was lacking. The cost of broadband was high, speeds were slow, and less than 15% of the population had smartphones. In a country where about 98% of all transactions were made in cash, access to Netflix required an international credit card. Almost nobody noticed Netflix’s arrival in India the following January.Eight months later, in September 2016, a billionaire named Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, launched a new telecom company called Jio. For the cost of a SIM card, which was priced for as little as Rs 150 ($2), Jio offered free high-speed 4G data for a limited time. A price war erupted. The cost of a gigabyte of data across providers plunged to the equivalent of 26 cents, the cheapest in the world. An enormous pool of new internet users emerged. Average mobile data consumption grew to nearly 10 gigabytes per user per month, about the same level as in the US. As of December 2020, the number of mobile internet users stood at more than 700 million.📷- Stories from our archives that put technology in perspective Sign up for Weekend Reads Sign up Stay updated on MIT Technology Review initiatives and events?YesNo With cheap, superfast data and growing familiarity with the internet, India was now ready for Netflix. Netflix, however, wasn’t yet ready for India. Although the platform had licensed some Hindi films, it didn’t have any original local content. It didn’t even have an office; decisions about India were made in faraway California.Netflix fell behind in what came to be called the streaming wars between the nearly 30 major platforms that sprang up. Hotstar, which was later bought by Disney +, paid around $2.5 billion for the right to broadcast all domestic and international cricket, including the wildly popular Indian Premier League. It quickly amassed 63 million subscribers. Amazon Prime Video, which launched several months after Netflix, acquired 9.4 million users. India’s streaming market, which a Boston Consulting Group study estimated would be worth $5 billion by 2023, was truly enormous, and all the platforms jostled for new subscribers.📷The hit show Little

Things, starring Dhruv Sehgal (left) and Mithila Palkar is a romantic comedy set in Mumbai.NETFLIX Attempting to make up for lost time, Netflix started to scoop up local content. It bought the streaming rights for Little Things, an enormously popular YouTube show about a millennial couple in Mumbai, and signed a three-year licensing deal with Shah Rukh Khan, a superstar actor known as the “King of Bollywood.” By 2018, there were just over half a million people subscribing to Netflix in India, according to the consultancy Media Partners Asia. It was a tiny number compared with the 65 million subscribers in the US. But India was the platform’s fastest-growing market in Asia. Netflix’s Hastings said he hoped for 100 million subscribers. To get there, the company would spend $400 million on Indian content in 2019 and 2020. Though it was exempt from control by the censorship board, Netflix agreed to a series of voluntary self-censorship measures, codified as “codes of conduct.”It was never a sure thing that Netflix could find its footing in India. Although Bollywood hadn’t changed very much over the years, it had grown ever larger and more potent as a cultural force. It made more films and sold more tickets than Hollywood. Nevertheless, Bollywood was dysfunctional. The actor Denzil Smith, who most recently appeared in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, told me about a major star who, taking advantage of the fact that many Indian filmmakers still don’t work with sync sound but dub over dialogue later in-studio, showed up on set without memorizing his lines. “He’d just move his lips, mumbling ‘sister fucker, mother fucker, fuck you, fuck you,’” said Smith, rolling his eyes. “And I was supposed to act opposite him!”Powerful people set the tone. A “chalta hai” (“it’s fine”) attitude on sets trickled all the way down. The industry cut corners. Actors were made to look older by simply adding a frosty white stripe to their hair. To make snow for a superhero movie, Vikramaditya Motwane, who would later become the showrunner of Sacred Games, had to experiment with tearing open diapers.“Chalta hai” can also have deadly consequences. In 2016, three actors on the set of a film in the Kannada language jumped 60 feet from a helicopter into a lake below. The lead actor, who was famous, was wearing a life jacket and made it to shore. The other two drowned. One of the men who died had, in an interview shortly before the scene was filmed, said that he wasn’t a good swimmer and was “scared” to do the stunt.But despite its lackadaisical quality, Bollywood mattered, says Constantinos Papavassilopoulos, an associate director at the London-based research firm Omdia. Bollywood-inspired content fit neatly into Netflix’s mantra of “local for global,” or locally made content that could attract a wide audience.Bombay’s huge talent pool, which the entertainment industry had for years failed to fully harness because it wanted to make essentially the same film over and over, began working at a furious pace. The work began reaching an audience even bigger than Bollywood’s—traveling not just beyond India, but beyond even the Indian diaspora. Netflix and other streaming services poured money into the TV and film industries, creating tens of thousands of jobs for actors and all the supporting staff necessary to meet both business and technical needs. Technicians were flown in from London and Paris, changing the look and feel of Indian cinema and teaching Indian crew members new skills.📷A still from the Netflix India series Delhi Crime.NETFLIX The absence of censorship allowed these services to tell a new kind of story—the story of India as it is, rather than one that was acceptable to the censor board. Streaming video had the potential to become an influential social force in a way that Bollywood never had been. The shows on streaming services consistently engaged with themes that occupied the public imagination: politics, religion, sex, violence against women. There were shows about millennial couples, single women, gay men, phishing gangs, assassins. One show,

Gandii Baat (Dirty Talk), on the streaming platform ALT Balaji, was an erotic series set in the countryside.Sacred Games received an Emmy nomination as well as a spot on a New York Times list of the 30 best international TV shows of the decade. Another Netflix show, Delhi Crime, won an international Emmy for best drama series.But this age of artistic openness may prove short lived. The troubles started in 2019, with Leila, a dystopian novel by Prayaag Akbar that was adapted into a Netflix series by Deepa Mehta. As a book, Leila hadn’t courted controversy—the Indian market for English-language novels is small. But when it arrived on Netflix, Hindu nationalists took offense at what they declared were criticisms of Hinduism. A member of a right-wing group filed a police complaint accusing Netflix of “deep-rooted Hinduphobia.” Later that year, Hindu nationalists took issue with the second season of Sacred Games. In one episode, a young Muslim man wins a neighbourhood cricket match against his Hindu opponents. The aggrieved opponents, unable to swallow the insult, kidnap him to teach him a lesson. They torture him and then drag him to the same spot where he won the match. As a crowd of jeering onlookers record every moment on their mobile phones, they beat him to death.Related Story 📷 How India became the world’s leader in internet shutdowns Closing communications to stifle protest is a tactic that’s stuck even during the covid crisis. The showrunner of Sacred Games, Vikramaditya Motwane, told me that after the furore around that episode, he was told to avoid “anything to do with religion.” Local media outlets reported that the government began seriously considering censoring streaming because of the lynching scene. The news that this might happen ricocheted around the industry.I traveled to India in late 2019 to see how the country’s nascent streaming industry was faring in its struggles with Hindu nationalism.Srishti Behl Arya comes from a family of Bollywood filmmakers. Her father, a director and producer, worked with Amitabh Bachchan, a legendary actor. When she was little, she accompanied her parents on location, where she and the other children of the cast and crew pretended to be film stars. “We ran around like psychos,” she told me when I visited her at Netflix’s offices in Bandra-Kurla, a wealthy suburban business district in Mumbai.In 2018, Netflix hired Arya to commission feature-length content. That year, the company made more than 20 original films and five original series in Hindi. But this did little to alter its public persona. In a country with more than 24 major languages, Netflix was still viewed as an English-language platform for westernized Indians. And this is where Arya, who knew everyone who mattered in Hindi film, fit into the picture. She had worked in advertising, and then as an actor and a writer, before moving on to TV production.Soon she enlisted many of her childhood friends, who had grown up to become some of the most powerful people in the Hindi film industry, to work for Netflix. She signed on Zoya Akhtar, whose last feature film was India’s official entry to the Academy Awards, to direct a short film. Like Arya, Akhtar comes from a film family, but because Bollywood is a male-dominated industry, it’s still almost impossible for a female filmmaker or female-oriented films to raise capital. By contrast, several women helmed projects at Netflix. The platform’s biggest star is Radhika Apte, a Bollywood actress who has appeared in so many Netflix productions that online wags joke she’s in all of them.📷Srishti Behl Arya, who runs Netflix's division of Indian original films.NETFLIX But working with Bollywood meant dealing with its shortcomings. Netflix held several workshops in Mumbai to train Indian content creators. It taught them how to develop a major series, but also helped them brush up on basics such as how to write, schedule, and budget. “That’s how we can add value to the industry,” Arya told me. “By helping it get more organized.”On my last day in Mumbai, I went to visit Red

Chillies Entertainment, a towering production house owned by Shah Rukh Khan, which produces shows for Netflix. Back in 2017, Hastings and Khan had appeared together in a stilted promotional skitannouncing a new spy thriller called Bard of Blood.The foyer was deserted on the day I arrived, except for a beautiful sculpture of Ganesha, a Hindu god who is viewed as the patron of the arts. It was wrapped in plastic to protect it from construction dust. Around it some barefoot workmen were operating power tools without any protective gear. On the fourth floor, an exhausted-looking man with slippers on his feet and salt in his dark hair emerged from an editing studio. Several years ago, newly graduated from the London School of Film, Patrick Graham had been struggling to land projects when a friend suggested he try Bollywood. He floundered at first, stifled by censorship. But then, in 2018, Netflix India gave Graham the budget to produce a fictional series in which Muslims are rounded up in internment camps. They also brought him in to co-write the screenplay for Leila. When we met, he was wrapping up production on Betaal, a four-episode zombie series that would be released the next year. Months earlier, in a conversation on the phone, Graham had seemed pumped at the opportunity. “It’s massive,” he’d said. But in person, in Mumbai, he was downcast. “I have to go through the series and remove anything that might offend,” he told me, gloomily. “The oversensitive people are winning.”In November 2020, Hindu nationalists went after Netflix again. Mira Nair’s critically acclaimed adaptation of Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable Boyshowed a Muslim boy kissing a Hindu girl. A leader of the BJP’s youth wing filed a police complaint about the series for “shooting kissing scenes under temple premises.” The leader accused the show of promoting “love jihad”—a conspiracy theory that claims Muslim men are seducing Hindu women in order to convert them to Islam.📷A scene from the film A Suitable Boy. From left: Danesh Razvi, Tanya Maniktala.MILAN MOUDGILL / ©ACORN TV/BBC ONE / COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION In January, another group of Hindu nationalists claimed offense, this time over a political drama on Amazon Prime Video called Tandav. They didn’t care for the depiction of an actor dressed as the Hindu god Shiva. The director quickly issued a public apology and deleted some offending scenes. But he was still named in police complaints in six states, along with members of his cast and crew. Prosecutors also charged Aparna Purohit, who heads Indian original programming for Amazon, with forgery, cyber-terrorism, and promoting hatred between classes.The very next month, the government announced what it called a “soft-touch self-regulatory architecture” for streaming services. This new ethics code, notionally voluntary, comes with ratings and a grievance system that make streaming, in effect, just as tightly regulated as film and TV.After the new code was announced, Amazon canceledthe upcoming season of The Family Man, a planned spy thriller, and the follow-up to Paatal Lok, a crime series. It also announced plans to co-produce its first Indian film—a mythological tale starring Akshay Kumar, an actor who is known for his close ties with Hindu nationalists.Netflix had entered India just when hundreds of millions of Indians discovered the internet. It helped create a new language for Indian streaming. In 2020, its subscriber base was estimated to have risen to 4.2 million. But whether the company—and streaming services more generally—can ultimately succeed depends in large measure on matters outside of their control.Kashyap, the director, believes he has a handle on the censorship problem. “We will say what we want to say,” he told me. “We will simply find different ways of saying it.” On March 3, his house and those of several other Bollywood stars were raided by tax authorities in what Nawab Malik, a spokesperson for the opposition Congress Party, described as an intimidation attempt. That same day, Netflix India announced a slate of 40 new films and

series.

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Smuggler

“Then what are you complaining about?”

“About hypocrisy. About lies. About misrepresentation. About that smuggler’s behavior to which you drive the uranist.”

—André Gide, Corydon, Fourth Dialogue

1.

I REMEMBER MY first kiss with absolute clarity. I was reading on a black chaise longue, upholstered with shiny velour, and it was right after dinner, the hour of freedom before I was obliged to begin my homework. I was sixteen.

It must have been early autumn or late spring, because I know I was in school at the time, and the sun was still out. I was shocked and thrilled by it, and reading that passage, from a novel by Hermann Hesse, made the book feel intensely real, fusing Hesse’s imaginary world with the physical object I was holding in my hands. I looked down at it, and back at the words on the page, and then around the room, which was empty, and I felt a keen and deep sense of discovery and shame. Something new had entered my life, undetected by anyone else, delivered safely and surreptitiously to me alone. To borrow an idea from André Gide, I had become a smuggler.

It wasn’t, of course, the first kiss I had encountered in a book. But this was the first kiss between two boys, characters in Beneath the Wheel, a short, sad novel about a sensitive student who gains admission to an elite school but then fails, quickly and inexorably, after he becomes entwined in friendship with a reckless, poetic classmate. I was stunned by their encounter—which most readers, and almost certainly Hesse himself, would have assigned to that liminal stage of adolescence before boys turn definitively to heterosexual interests. For me, however, it was the first evidence that I wasn’t entirely alone in my own desires. It made my loneliness seem more present to me, more intelligible and tangible, and something that could be named. Even more shocking was the innocence with which Hesse presented it:

An adult witnessing this little scene might have derived a quiet joy from it, from the tenderly inept shyness and the earnestness of these two narrow faces, both of them handsome, promising, boyish yet marked half with childish grace and half with shy yet attractive adolescent defiance.

Certainly no adult I knew would have derived anything like joy from this little scene—far from it. Where I grew up, a decaying Rust Belt city in upstate New York, there was no tradition of schoolboy romance, at least none that had made it to my public high school, where the hierarchies were rigid, the social categories inviolable, the avenues for sexual expression strictly and collectively policed by adults and youth alike. These were the early days of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when recent gains in visibility and political legitimacy for gay rights were being vigorously countered by a newly resurgent cultural conservatism. The adults in my world, had they witnessed two lonely young boys reach out to each other in passionate friendship, would have thrashed them before committing them to the counsel of religion or psychiatry.

But the discovery of that kiss changed me. Reading, which had seemed a retreat from the world, was suddenly more vital, dangerous, and necessary. If before I had read haphazardly, bouncing from adventure to history to novels and the classics, now I read with focus and determination. For the next five years, I sought to expand and open the tiny fissure that had been created by that kiss. Suddenly, after years of feeling almost entirely disconnected from the sexual world, my reading was finally spurred both by curiosity and Eros.

From an oppressive theological academy in southern Germany, where students struggled to learn Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, to the rooftops of Paris during the final days of Adolf Hitler’s occupation, I sought in books the company of poets and scholars, hoodlums and thieves, tormented aristocrats bouncing around the spas and casinos of Europe, expat Americans slumming it in the City of Light, an introspective Roman emperor lamenting a lost boyfriend, and a middle-aged author at the height of his powers and the brink of exhaustion. These were the worlds, and the men, presented by Gide, Jean Cocteau, Oscar Wilde, Jean Genet, James Baldwin, Thomas Mann, and Robert Musil, to name only those whose writing has lingered with me. Some of these authors were linked by ties of friendship. Some of them were themselves more or less openly homosexual, others ambiguous or fluid in their desires, and others, by all evidence, bisexual or primarily heterosexual. It would be too much to say their work formed a canon of gay literature—but for those who sought such a canon, their work was about all one could find.

And yet, in retrospect, and after rereading many of those books more than thirty years later, I’m astonished by how sad, furtive, and destructive an image of sexuality they presented. Today we have an insipid idea of literature as selfdiscovery, and a reflexive conviction that young people—especially those struggling with identity or prejudice—need role models. But these books contained no role models at all, and they depicted self-discovery as a cataclysmic severance from society. The price of survival, for the self-aware homosexual, was a complete inversion of values, dislocation, wandering, and rebellion. One of the few traditions you were allowed to keep was misogyny. And most of the men represented in these books were not willing to pay the heavy price of rebellion and were, to appropriate Hesse’s phrase, ground beneath the wheel.

The value of these books wasn’t anything wholesome they contained, or any moral instruction they offered. Rather, it was the process of finding them, the thrill of reading them, the way the books themselves, like the men they depicted, detached you from the familiar moral landscape. They gave a name to the palpable, physical loneliness of sexual solitude, but they also greatly increased your intellectual and emotional solitude. Until very recently, the canon of literature for a gay kid was discovered entirely alone, by threads of connection that linked authors from intertwined demimondes. It was smuggling, but also scavenging. There was no Internet, no “customers who bought this item also bought,” no helpful librarians steeped in the discourse of tolerance and diversity, and certainly no one in the adult world who could be trusted to give advice and advance the project of limning this still mostly forbidden body of work.

The pleasure of finding new access to these worlds was almost always punctured by the bleakness of the books themselves. One of the two boys who kissed in that Hesse novel eventually came apart at the seams, lapsed into nervous exhaustion, and then one afternoon, after too much beer, he stumbled or willingly slid into a slow-moving river, where his body was found, like Ophelia’s, floating serenely and beautiful in the chilly waters. Hesse would blame poor Hans’s collapse on the severity of his education and a lamentable disconnection from nature, friendship, and congenial social structures. But surely that kiss, and that friendship with a wayward poet, had something to do with it. As Hans is broken to pieces, he remembers that kiss, a sign that at some level Hesse felt it must be punished.

Hans was relatively lucky, dispensed with chaste, poetic discretion, like the lover in a song cycle by Franz Schubert or Robert Schumann. Other boys who found themselves enmeshed in the milieu of homoerotic desire were raped, bullied, or killed, or lapsed into madness, disease, or criminality. They were disposable or interchangeable, the objects of pederastic fixation or the instrumental playthings of adult characters going through aesthetic, moral, or existential crises. Even the survivors face, at the end of these novels, the bleakest existential crises. Even the survivors face, at the end of these novels, the bleakest of futures: isolation, wandering, and a perverse form of aging in which the loss of youth is never compensated with wisdom.

One doesn’t expect novelists to give us happy endings. But looking back on many of the books I read during my age of smuggling, I’m profoundly disturbed by what I now recognize as their deeply entrenched homophobia. I wonder if it took a toll on me, if what seemed a process of self-liberation was inseparable from infection with the insecurities, evasions, and hypocrisy stamped into gay identity during the painful, formative decades of its nascence in the last century. I wonder how these books will survive, and in what form: historical documents, symptoms of an ugly era, cris de coeur of men (mostly men) who had made it only a few steps along the long road to true equality? Will we condescend to them, and treat their anguish with polite, clinical detachment? I hesitate to say that these books formed me, because that suggests too simplistic a connection between literature and character. But I can’t be the only gay man in middle age who now wonders if what seemed a gift at the time—the discovery of a literature of same-sex desire just respectable enough to circulate without suspicion—was in fact more toxic than a youth of that era could ever have anticipated.

2.

Before the mid-1990s, when the Internet began to collapse the distinction between cities, suburbs, and everywhere else, books were the most reliable access to the larger world, and the only access to books was the bookstore or the library. The physical fact of a book was both a curse and a blessing. It made reading a potentially dangerous act if you were reading the wrong things, and of course one had to physically find and possess the book. But the mere fact of being a book, the fact that someone had published the words and they were circulating in the world, gave a book the presumption of respectability, especially if it was deemed “literature.” There were, of course, bad or dangerous books in the world—and self-appointed guardians who sought to suppress and destroy them—but decent people assumed that these were safely contained within universities.

I borrowed my copy of Hesse’s Beneath the Wheel from the library, so I can’t be sure whether it contained any of the small clues that led to other like-minded books. At least one copy I have found in a used bookstore does have an invaluable signpost on the back cover: “Along with Heinrich Mann’s The Blue Angel, Emil Strauss’s Friend Death, and Robert Musil’s Young Törless, all of which came out in the same period, it belongs to the genre of school novels.” Perhaps that’s what prompted me to read Musil’s far more complicated, beautifully written, and excruciating schoolboy saga. Hans, shy, studious, and trusting, led me to Törless, a bolder, meaner, more dangerous boy.

Other threads of connection came from the introductions, afterwords, footnotes, and the solicitations to buy other books found just inside the back cover. When I first started reading independently of classroom assignments and the usual boy’s diet of Rudyard Kipling, Jonathan Swift, Alexandre Dumas, and Jules Verne—reading without guidance and with all the odd detours and byways of an autodidact—I devised a three-part test for choosing a new volume: first, a book had to have a black or orange spine, then the colors of Penguin Classics, which someone had assured me was a reliable brand; second, I had to be able to finish the book within a few days, lest I waste the opportunity of my weekly visit to the bookstore; and third, I had to be hooked by the narrative within one or two pages. That is certainly what led me, by chance, to Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles, a rather slight and pretentious novel of incestuous infatuation, gender slippage, homoerotic desire, and surreal distortions of time and space. I knew nothing of Cocteau but was intrigued by one of his line drawings on the cover, which showed two androgynous teenagers, and a summary which assured it was about a boy named Paul, who worshipped a fellow student.

I still have that copy of Cocteau. In the back there was yet more treasure, a whole page devoted to advertising the novels of Gide (The Immoralist is described as “the story of man’s rebellion against social and sexual conformity”) and another to Genet (The Thief’s Journal is “a voyage of discovery beyond all moral laws; the expression of a philosophy of perverted vice, the working out of an aesthetic degradation”). These little précis were themselves a guide to the coded language—“illicit, corruption, hedonism”—that often, though not infallibly, led to other enticing books. And yet one might follow these little broken twigs and crushed leaves only to end up in the frustrating world of mere decadence, Wagnerian salons, undirected voluptuousness, the enervating eccentricities of Joris-Karl Huysmans or the chaste, coy allusions to vice in Wilde.

Finally, there were a handful of narratives that had successfully transitioned into open and public respectability, even if always slightly tainted by scandal. If the local theater company still performed Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, who could fault a boy for reading The Picture of Dorian Gray?

Conveniently, a 1982 Bantam Classics edition contained both, and also the play Salomé. Wilde’s novel was a skein of brilliant banter stretched over a rather silly, Gothic tale, and the hiding-in-plain-sight of its homoeroticism was deeply unfulfilling. Even then, too scared to openly acknowledge my own feelings, I found Wilde’s obfuscations embarrassing. More powerful than anything in the highly contrived and overwrought games of Dorian was a passing moment in Salomé when the Page of Herodias obliquely confesses his love for the Young Syrian, who has committed suicide in disgust at Salomé’s licentious display. “He has killed himself,” the boy laments, “the man who was my friend! I gave him a little box of perfumes and earrings wrought in silver, and now he has killed himself.” It was these moments that slipped through, sudden intimations of honest feeling, which made plowing through Wilde’s self-indulgence worth the effort.

Then there was the most holy and terrifying of all the publicly respectable representations of homosexual desire, Mann’s Death in Venice, which might even be found in one’s parents’ library, the danger of its sexuality safely ossified inside the imposing façade of its reputation. A boy who read Death in Venice wasn’t slavering over a beautiful Polish adolescent in a sailor’s suit, he was climbing a mountain of sorts, proving his devotion to culture.

But a boy who read Death in Venicewas receiving a very strange moral and sentimental education. Great love was somehow linked to intellectual crisis, a symptom of mental exhaustion. It was entirely inward and unrequited, and it was likely triggered by some dislocation of the self from familiar surroundings, to travel, new sights and smells, and hot climates. It was unsettling and isolating, and drove one to humiliating vanities and abject voyeurism. Like so much of what one found in Wilde (perfumed and swaddled in cant), Gide (transplanted to the colonial realms of North Africa, where bourgeois morality was suspended), or Genet (floating freely in the postwar wreckage and flotsam of values, ideals, and norms), Death in Venice also required a young reader to locate himself somewhere on the inexorable axis of pederastic desire.

In retrospect I understand that this fixation on older men who suddenly have their worlds shattered by the brilliant beauty of a young man or adolescent was an intentional, even ironic repurposing of the classical approbation of Platonic pederasty. It allowed the “uranist”—to use the pejorative Victorian term for a homosexual—to broach, tentatively and under the cover of a venerable and respected literary tradition, the broader subject of same-sex desire. While for some, especially Gide, pederasty was the ideal, for others it may have been a gateway to discussing desire among men of relatively equal age and status, what we now think of as being gay. But as an eighteen-year-old reader, I had no interest in being on the receiving end of the attentions of older men; and as a middle-aged man, no interest in children.

The dynamics of the pederastic dyad—like so many narratives of colonialism —also meant that in most cases the boy was silent, seemingly without an intellectual or moral life. He was pure object, pure receptivity, unprotesting, perfect and perfectly silent in his beauty. When Benjamin Britten composed his last opera, based on Mann’s novella, the youth is portrayed by a dancer, voiceless in a world of singing, present only as an ideal body moving in space. In Gide’s Immoralist, the boys of Algeria (and Italy and France) are interchangeable, lost in the torrents of monologue from the narrator, Michel, who wants us to believe that they are mere instruments in his long, agonizing process of self-discovery and liberation. In Genet’s Funeral Rites, a frequently pornographic novel of sexual violence among the partisans and collaborators of Paris during the liberation, the narrator/author even attempts to make a virtue of the interchangeability of his young objects of desire: “The characters in my books all resemble each other,” he says. He’s right, and he amplifies their sameness by suppressing or eliding their personalities, dropping identifying names or pronouns as he shifts between their individual stories, often reducing them to anonymous body parts.

By reducing boys and young men to ciphers, the narrative space becomes open for untrammeled displays of solipsism, narcissism, self-pity, and of course self-justification. These books, written over a period of decades, by authors of vastly different temperaments and sexualities, are surprisingly alike in this claustrophobia of desire and subjugation of the other. Indeed, the psychological violence done to the male object of desire is often worse in authors who didn’t manifest any particular personal interest in same-sex desire. For example, in Musil’s Confusions of Young Törless, a gentle and slightly effeminate boy named Basini becomes a tool for the social, intellectual, and emotional advancement of three classmates who are all, presumably, destined to get married and lead entirely heterosexual lives. One student uses Basini to learn how to exercise power and manipulate people in preparation for a life of public accomplishment; another tortures him to test his confused spiritual theories, a stew of supposedly Eastern mysticism; and Törless turns to him, and turns on him, simply to feel something, to sense his presence and power in the world, to add to the stockroom of his mind and soul.

We are led to believe that this last form of manipulation is, in its effect on poor Basini, the cruelest. Later in the book, when Musil offers us the classic irony of the bildungsroman—the guarantee that everything that has happened was just a phase, a way station on the path of authorial evolution—he explains why Törless “never felt remorse” for what he did to Basini:

For the only real interest [that “aesthetically inclined intellectuals” like the older Törless] feel is concentrated on the growth of their own soul, or personality, or whatever one may call the thing within us that every now and then increases by the addition of some idea picked up between the lines of a book, or which speaks to us in the silent language of a painting[,] the thing that every now and then awakens when some solitary, wayward tune floats past us and away, away into the distance, whence with alien movements tugs at the thin scarlet thread of our blood —the thing that is never there when we are writing minutes, building machines, going to the circus, or following any of the hundreds of other similar occupations.

The conquest of beautiful boys, whether a hallowed tradition of all-male schools or the vestigial remnant of classical poetry, is simply another way to add to one’s fund of poetic and emotional knowledge, like going to the symphony. Today we might be blunter: to refine his aesthetic sensibility, Törless participated in the rape, torture, humiliation, and emotional abuse of a gay kid.

And he did it in a confined space. It is a recurring theme (and perhaps cliché) of many of these novels that homoerotic desire must be bounded within narrow spaces, dark rooms, private attics, as if the breach in conventional morality opened by same-sex desire demands careful, diligent, and architectural containment. The boys who beat and sodomize Basini do it in a secret space in the attic above their prep school. Throughout much of Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles, two siblings inhabit a darkly enchanted room, bickering and berating each other as they attempt to displace unrequited or forbidden desires onto acceptable alternatives. Cocteau helpfully gives us a sketch of this room—a few wispy lines that suggest something that Henri Matisse might have painted—with two beds, parallel to each other, as if in a hospital ward. Sickness, of course, is ever-present throughout almost all of these novels as well: the cholera that kills Aschenbach in Death in Venice, the tuberculosis which Michel overcomes and to which his hapless wife succumbs in The Immoralist, and the pallor, ennui, listlessness, and fevers of Cocteau. James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, a later, more deeply ambivalent contribution to this canon of illness and enclosure, takes its name from the cramped, cluttered chambre de bonne that contains this desire, with the narrator keenly aware that if what happens there—a passionate relationship between a young American man in Paris and his Italian boyfriend— escapes that space, the world of possibilities for gay men would explode. But floods of booze, perhaps alcoholism, and an almost suicidal emotional frailty haunt this space, too.

Often it is the author’s relation to these dark spaces that gives us our only reliable sense of how he envisioned the historical trajectory of being gay. In Cocteau’s novel, the room becomes a ship, or a portal, transporting the youth Cocteau’s novel, the room becomes a ship, or a portal, transporting the youth into the larger world of adult desires. The lines are fluid, but there is a possibility of connection between the perfervid world of contained sexuality and the larger universe of sanctioned desires. In Baldwin, the young Italian proposes the two men keep their room as a space apart, a refuge for secret assignations, even as his American lover prepares to reunite with his fiancée and return to a life of normative sexuality. They could continue their relationship privately, on the side, a quiet compromise between two sexual realms. But Musil’s attic, essentially a torture chamber, is a much more desperate space, a permanent ghetto for illicit desire.

Even those among these books that were self-consciously written to advance the cause of gay men, to make their anguish more comprehensible to a reflexively hostile straight audience, leave almost no room—no space—for many openly gay readers. The parallels with colonial discourse are troubling: the colonized “other,” the homosexual making his appeal to straight society, must in turn pass on the violence and colonize and suppress yet weaker or more marginal figures on the spectrum of sexuality. Thus in the last of Gide’s daring dialogues in defense of homosexuality, first published piecemeal, then together commercially as Corydon in 1924—a tedious book full of pseudoscience and speculative extensions of Darwinian theory—the narrator contemptuously dismisses the unmanly homosexual: “If you please, we’ll leave the inverts aside for now. The trouble is that ill-informed people confuse them with normal homosexuals. And you understand, I hope, what I mean by ‘inverts.’ After all, heterosexuality too includes certain degenerates, people who are sick and obsessed.”

Along with the effeminate, the old and the aging are also beneath contempt. The casual scorn in Mann’s novella for an older man whom Aschenbach encounters on his passage to Venice is almost as horrifying as the sexual abuse and mental torture of young Basini in Musil’s novel. Among gay men, Mann’s painted clown is one of the most unsettling figures in literature, a “young-old man” whom Mann calls a “repulsive sight.” He apes the manners and dress of youth but has false teeth and bad makeup, luridly colored clothing, and a rakish hat, and is desperately trying to run with a younger crowd of men: “He was an old man, beyond a doubt, with wrinkles and crow’s feet round eyes and mouth; the dull carmine of the cheeks was rouge, the brown hair a wig.” Mann’s writing rises to a suspiciously incandescent brilliance in his descriptions of this supposedly loathsome figure. For reasons entirely unnecessary to the plot or development of his central characters, Baldwin resurrects Mann’s grotesquerie, in a phantasmagorical scene that describes an encounter between his young

American protagonist and a nameless old “queen” who approaches him in a bar:

American protagonist and a nameless old “queen” who approaches him in a bar:

The face was white and thoroughly bloodless with some kind of foundation cream; it stank of powder and a gardenia-like perfume. The shirt, open coquettishly to the navel, revealed a hairless chest and a silver crucifix; the shirt was covered with paper-thin wafers, red and green and orange and yellow and blue, which stormed in the light and made one feel that the mummy might, at any moment, disappear in flame.

This is the future to which the narrator—and by extension the reader if he is a gay man—is condemned. Unless, of course, he succumbs to disease or addiction. At best there is a retreat from society, perhaps to someplace where the economic differential between the Western pederast and the colonized boy makes an endless string of anonymous liaisons economically feasible. Violent death is the worst of the escapes. Not content with merely parodying older gay men, Baldwin must also murder them. In a scene that does gratuitous violence to the basic voice and continuity of the book, the narrator imagines in intimate detail events he has not actually witnessed: the murder of a flamboyant bar owner who sexually harasses and extorts the young Giovanni (by this point betrayed, abandoned, and reduced to what is, in effect, prostitution). The murder happens behind closed doors, safely contained in a room filled with “silks, colors, perfumes.”

3.

If I remember with absolute clarity the first same-sex kiss I encountered in literature, I don’t remember very well when my interest in specifically homoerotic narrative began to wane. But again, thanks to the physicality of the book, I have an archaeology more reliable than memory. As a young reader, I was in the habit of writing the date when I finished a book on the inside front cover, and so I know that sometime shortly before I turned twenty-one, my passion for dark tales of unrequited desire, sexual manipulation, and destructive Nietzschean paroxysms of self-transcendence peaked, then flagged. That was also the same time that I came out to friends and family, which was prompted by the complete loss of hope that a long and unrequited love for a classmate might be returned. Logic suggests that these events were related, that the collapse of romantic illusions and the subsequent initiation of an actual erotic life with real, living people dulled the allure of Wilde, Gide, Mann, and the other authors who were loosely in their various orbits.

were loosely in their various orbits.

It happened this way: For several years I had been drawn to a young man who seemed to me curiously like Hans from Hesse’s novel. Physically, at least, they were alike: “Deep-set, uneasy eyes glowed dimly in his handsome and delicate face; fine wrinkles, signs of troubled thinking, twitched on his forehead, and his thin, emaciated arms and hands hung at his side with the weary gracefulness reminiscent of a figure by Botticelli.” But in every other way my beloved was an invention. I projected onto him an elaborate but entirely imaginary psychology, which I now suspect was cobbled together from bits and pieces of the books I had been reading. He was sad, silent, and doomed, like Hans, but also cold, remote, and severe, like Törless, cruelly beautiful like all the interchangeable sailors and hoodlums in Genet, but also intellectual, suffering, and mystically connected to dark truths from which I was excluded. When I recklessly confessed my love to him—how long I had nurtured it and how complex, beautiful, and poetic it was—he responded not with anger or disgust but impatience: “You can’t put all this on me.”

He was right. It took me only a few days to realize it intellectually, a few weeks to begin accepting it emotionally, and a few years not to feel fear and shame in his presence. He had recognized in an instant that what I had felt for years, rather like Swann for Odette, had nothing to do with him. It wasn’t even love, properly speaking. I can’t claim that it was all clear to me at the time, that I was conscious of any connection between what I had read and the excruciating dead end of my own fantasy life. I make these connections in retrospect. But the realization that I would never be with him because he didn’t in fact exist—not in the way I imagined him—must have soured me on the literature of longing, torment, and convoluted desire. And the challenge and excitement of negotiating a genuine erotic life rendered so much of what I had found in these books painfully dated and irrelevant.

I want to be rigorously honest about my feelings for this literature, whether it distorted my sense of self and even, perhaps, corrupted my imagination. The safe thing to say is that I can’t possibly find an answer to that, not simply because memory is unreliable, but because we never know whether books implant things in us or merely confirm what is already there. In Young Törless, Musil proposes the idea that the great literature of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and William Shakespeare is essentially a transitional crutch for young minds, a mental prosthesis or substitute identity during the formlessness of adolescence: “These associations originating outside, and these borrowed emotions, carry young people over the dangerously soft spiritual ground of the years in which they need to be of some significance to themselves and nevertheless are still too incomplete to have any real significance.”

It’s important to divorce the question of how these books may have influenced me from the malicious accusations of corruption that have dogged gay fiction from the beginning. In the course of our reading lives, we will devour dozens, perhaps hundreds, of crude, scabrous, violent books, with no discernible impact on our moral constitution. And homosexual writers certainly didn’t invent the general connection between sexuality and illness, or the thin line between passion and violence, or sadism and masochism, or the sexual exploitation of the young or defenseless. And the mere mention of same-sex desire is still seen in too many places around the world today as inherently destructive to young minds. Gide’s Corydon decried the illogic of this a century ago: “And if, in spite of advice, invitations, provocations of all kinds, he should manifest a homosexual tendency, you immediately blame his reading or some other influence (and you argue in the same way for an entire nation, an entire people); it has to be an acquired taste, you insist; he must have been taught it; you refuse to admit that he might have invented it all by himself.”

And I want to register an important caveat about the literature of same-sex desire: it is not limited to the books I read, the authors I encountered, or the tropes that now seem to me so sad and destructive. In 1928, E. M. Forster wrote a short story called “Arthur Snatchfold” that wasn’t published until 1972, two years after the author’s death. In it, an older man, Sir Richard Conway, respectable in all ways, visits the country estate of a business acquaintance, where he has a quick, early-morning sexual encounter with a young deliveryman in a field near the house. Later, as Sir Richard chats with his host at their club in London, he learns that the liaison was seen by a policeman, the young man was arrested, and the authorities sent him to prison. To his great relief, Sir Richard also learns that he himself is safe from discovery, that the “other man” was never identified, and despite great pressure on the working-class man to incriminate his upper-class partner, he refused to do so.

“He [the deliveryman] was instantly removed from the court and as he went he shouted back at us—you’ll never credit this—that if he and the old grandfather didn’t mind it why should anyone else,” says Sir Richard’s host, fatuously indignant about the whole affair. Sir Richard, ashamed and sad but trapped in the armor of his social position, does the only thing he can: “Taking a notebook from his pocket, he wrote down the name of his lover, yes, his lover who was going to prison to save him, in order that he might not forget it.” It isn’t a great story, but it is an important moment in the evolution of an idea of loyalty and honor within the emerging category of homosexual identity. I didn’t

discover it until years after it might have done me some good.

Forster’s story is exceptional because only one man is punished, and he is given a voice—and a final, clear, unequivocal protest against the injustice. The other man escapes, but into shame, guilt, and self-recrimination. And yet it is the escapee who takes up the pen and begins to write. We might say of Sir Richard what we often say of our parents as we come to peace with them: he did the best he could. And for all the internalized homophobia of the authors I began reading more than thirty years ago, I would say the same thing. They did the best they could. They certainly did far more than privately inscribe a name in a book. I can’t honestly say that I would have had even Sir Richard’s limited courage in 1928.

But Forster’s story, which he didn’t dare publish while he was alive, is the exception, not the rule. It is painful to read the bulk of this early canon, and it will only become more and more painful, as gay subcultures dissolve and the bourgeois respectability that so many of these authors abandoned yet craved becomes the norm. In Genet, marriage between two men was the ultimate profanation, one of the strongest inversions of value the author could muster to scandalize his audience and delight his rebellious readers. The image of samesex marriage was purely explosive, a strategy for blasting apart the hypocrisy and pretentions of traditional morality. Today it is becoming commonplace.

I wonder if these books will survive like the literature of abolition, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin—marginal, dated, remembered as important for its earnest, sentimental ambition but also a catalogue of stereotypes. Or if they will be mostly forgotten, like the nineteenth-century literature of aesthetic perversity and decadence that many of these authors so deeply admired. Will Gide and Genet be as obscure to readers as Huysmans and the Comte de Lautréamont (Isidore-Lucien Ducasse)?

I hope not, and not least because they mattered to me, and helped forge a common language of reference among many gay men of my generation. I hope they survive for the many poignant epitaphs they contain, grave markers for the men who were used, abused, and banished from their pages. Let me write them down in my notebook, so I don’t forget their names: Hans, who loved Hermann; Basini, who loved Törless; the Page of Herodias, who loved the Young Syrian; Giovanni, who loved David; and all the rest, unnamed, often with no voice, but not forgotten.

TIM KREIDER

[1921designs]

My daughter and God

FOUR YEARS AGO, driving home from picking up our twelve-year-old daughter from summer camp, my wife reached into her purse for a tissue and lost control of the car. This occurred on a stretch of Interstate 10 between Houston and San Antonio, near the town of Gonzales. The accident occurred as many do: a moment of distraction, a small mistake, and suddenly everything is up for grabs. My wife and daughter were in the midst of a minor argument over my daughter’s need to blow her nose. During high-pollen season, she is a perennial sniffer, and the sound drives my wife crazy. Get a Kleenex, Leslie said, for God’s sake, and when Iris, out of laziness or exhaustion or the mild day-to-day defiance of all teenagers, refused to do so, my wife reached for her purse, inadvertently turning the wheel to the left.

In the case of some vehicles, the mistake might have been rectified, but not in the case of my wife’s—a top-heavy SUV with jacked-up suspension. When she realized her error, she overcorrected to the right, then again to the left, the car swerving violently. They were on a bridge that passed above a gully: on either side, nothing but gravity and forty vertical feet of air. That they would hit the guardrail was now inevitable. In moments of acute stress, time seems to slow. The name for this is tachypsychia, from the Greek tach, meaning “speed,” and psych, meaning “mind.” Thus, despite the chaos and panic of these moments, my wife had time to form a thought: I have killed my daughter.

This didn’t happen, although the accident was far from over. The car did not break through the guardrail but ricocheted back onto the highway, spinning in a one-eighty before flopping onto its side in a powdery explosion of airbags. It struck another vehicle, driven by a pastor and his wife on their way home from Sunday lunch, though my wife has no memory of this. For what seemed like hours the car traveled in this manner, then gravity took hold once more. Like a whale breaching the surface, it lifted off the roadway, turned belly-up, and crashed down onto its roof. The back half of the car compacted like an accordion: steel crushing, glass bursting, my daughter’s belongings—clothes, shoes, books, an expensive violin—exploding onto the highway. Other cars whizzed past, narrowly missing them. A final jolt, the car rolled again, and it came to a halt, facing forward, resting on its wheels.

As my wife tells it, the next moment was very nearly comic. She and my daughter looked at each other. The car had been utterly obliterated, but there was no blood, no pain, no evidence of bodily injury to either of them. “We’ve been in an accident,” my wife robotically observed.

My daughter looked down at her hand. “I am holding my phone,” she said— as, indeed, she somehow still was. “Do you want me to call 911?”

There was no need. Though in the midst of things the two of them had felt alone in the universe, the accident had occurred in the presence of a dozen other vehicles, all of which had now stopped and disgorged their occupants, who were racing to the scene. A semi moved in behind them to block the highway. By this time my wife’s understanding of events had widened only to the extent that she was aware that she had created a great deal of inconvenience for other people.

She was apologizing to everyone, mistaking their amazement for anger. Everybody had expected them to be dead, not sitting upright in their destroyed vehicle, neither one of them with so much as a hair out of place. Some began to weep; others had the urge to touch them. The cops arrived, a fire truck, an ambulance. While my wife and daughter were checked out by an EMT, onlookers organized a posse to prowl the highway for my daughter’s belongings. Because my wife and daughter no longer had a car to put them into, a woman offered to bring the items to our house; she was headed for Houston to visit her son and was pulling a trailer of furniture. The EMT was as baffled as everybody else. “Nobody walks away from something like this,” he said.

I was to learn of these events several hours later, when my wife phoned me. I was in the grocery store with our six-year-old son, and when I saw my wife’s number my first thought was that she was calling to tell me she was running late, because she always is.

“Okay,” I said, not bothering to say hello, “where are you?”

Thus her first tender steps into explaining what had occurred. An accident, she said. A kind of a big fender-bender, really. Nobody hurt, but the car was out of commission; I’d need to come get them.

I wasn’t nice about this. Part of the dynamic in our marriage is the unstated fact that I am a better driver than my wife. I have never been in an accident; my one and only speeding ticket was issued when the first George Bush was president. About every two years my wife does something careless in a parking lot that costs a lot of money, and she has received so many tickets that she has been forced to retake driver’s education—and those are just the tickets I know about. The rules of modern marriage do not include confiscating your wife’s car keys, but more than once I have considered doing this.

“A fender-bender,” I repeated. Christ almighty, this again.“How bad is it?”

“Everybody’s fine. You don’t have to worry.”

“I get that. You said that already.” I was in the cereal aisle; my son was bugging me to buy a box of something much too sweet. I tossed it into the cart.

“What about the car?”

“Um, it kind of . . . rolled.”

I imagined a Labrador retriever lazily rotating onto his back in front of the fireplace. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.” “It’s okay, really,” my wife said.

“Do you mean it rolled over?”

“It happened kind of fast. Totally no big deal, though.”

It sounded like a huge deal. “Let me see if I have this right. You were driving and the car rolled over.”

“Iris wouldn’t blow her nose. I was getting her a Kleenex. You know how she is. The doctors say she’s absolutely fine.”

“What doctors?” It was becoming clear that she was in a state of shock.

“Where are you?”

“At the hospital. It’s very small. I’m not even sure you’d call it a hospital.

Everybody’s been so nice.”

And so on. By the time the call ended, I had some idea of the seriousness, though not completely. Gonzales was three hours away. I abandoned my grocery cart, raced home, got on the phone, found somebody to look after our son, and got in my car. Several more calls followed, each adding a piece to the puzzle, until I was able to conclude that my wife and daughter were alive but should be dead. I knew this, but I didn’t feel it. For the moment I was locked into the project of retrieving them from the small town where they’d been stranded. It was after ten o’clock when I pulled into the driveway of Gonzales Memorial Hospital, a modern building the size of a suburban dental office. I did not see my wife, who was standing at the edge of the parking lot, looking out over the empty fields behind it. I raced inside, and there was Iris. She was slender and tan from a month in the Texas sunshine, and wearing a yellow T-shirt dress. She had never looked more beautiful, and it was this beauty that brought home the magnitude of events. I threw my arms around her, tears rising in my throat; I had never been so happy to see anybody in my life. When I asked her where her mother was, she said she didn’t know; one of the nurses directed us outside. I found myself unable to take a hand off my daughter; some part of me needed constant reassurance of her existence. I saw my wife standing at the edge of the lot, facing away. I called her name, she turned, and the two of us headed toward her.

As my wife tells the story, this was the moment when, as the saying goes, she got God. Once the two of them had been discharged, my wife had stepped outside to call me with this news. But the signal quality was poor, and she abandoned the attempt. I’d be along soon enough.

She found herself, then, standing alone in the Texas night. I do not recall if the weather was clear, but I’d like to think it was, all those fat stars shining down. My wife had been raised Missouri Synod Lutheran, but a series of intertribal squabbles had soured her parents on the whole thing, and apart from weddings and funerals, she hadn’t set foot in a church for years. Yet the outdoor cathedral of a starry Texas night is as good a place as any to communicate with the Almighty, which she commenced to do. In the hours since the accident, as the adrenaline cleared, her recollection of events had led her to a calculus that rewrote everything she thought she knew about the world. Until that night, her vision of a universal deity had been basically impersonal. God, in her mind, was simply too busy to take an interest in individual human affairs. The universe possessed a moral shape, but events were haphazard, unguided by providence. Now, as she contemplated the accident, mentally listing the many ways that she and our daughter should have died and yet did not, she decided this was wrong. Of course God paid attention. Only the intercession of a divine hand could explain such a colossal streak of luck. Likewise did the accident become in her mind a product of celestial design. It was a message; it meant something. She had been placed in a circumstance in which a mother’s greatest fear was about to be realized, then yanked from the brink. Her future emerged in her mind as something given back to her—it was as if she and our daughter had been killed on the highway and then restored to life—and like all supplicants in the wilderness, she asked God what her purpose was, why he’d returned her to the world.

That was the moment when Iris and I emerged from the building and called her name, giving her the answer.

Until that night we were a family that had lived an entirely secular existence. This wasn’t planned; things simply happened that way. My religious background was different from my wife’s, but only by degree. I was raised in the Catholic Church, but its messages were delivered to me in a lethargic and off-key manner that failed to gain much traction. My father did not attend mass—I was led to believe this had something to do with the trauma of his attending Catholic grade school—and my mother, who dutifully took my sister and me to church every Sunday, did not receive communion. Why this should be so I never thought to ask. Always she met us at the rear of the church so that we could make a quick exit “to avoid the traffic.” (There was no traffic.) We never attended a church picnic or drank coffee in the basement after mass or went to Bible study; we socialized with no other families in the parish. Religion was never discussed over the dinner table or anyplace else. I went to just enough Sunday school to meet the minimum requirements for first communion, but because I went to a private school with afternoon activities, I could not attend confirmation class. My mother struck a deal with the priest. If I met with him for a couple of hours to discuss religious matters, I could be confirmed. I had no idea why I was doing any of this or what it meant, only that I needed to select a new name, taken from the saints. I chose Cornelius, not because I knew who he was but because that was the name of my favorite character in Planet of the Apes.

Within a couple of years I was off to boarding school, and my life as a Roman Catholic, nominal as it was, came to an end. During a difficult period in my midtwenties, I briefly flirted with church attendance, thinking it might offer me some comfort and direction, but I found it just as stultifying and embarrassing as I always had, full of weird sexual obsessions, exclusionary politics, and a deep love of hocus-pocus, overlaid with a doctrine of obedience that was complete anathema to my newly independent self. If asked, I would have said that I believed in God—one never really loses those mental contours once they’re established—but that organized religious practice struck me as completely infantile. When my wife and I were married, a set of odd circumstances led us to choose an Anglican priest to officiate, but this was a decision we regretted, and when our daughter was born, the subject of baptism never came up. Essentially, we viewed ourselves as too smart for religion. I’ll put it another way. Religion was for people who wanted to stay children all their lives. We didn’t. We were the grown-ups.

In the aftermath of the accident, and the event that I now think of as “the revelation of the parking lot,” all this went out the window. I was not half as sure as my wife that God had interceded; I’m a skeptic and always will be. But it was also the case that I was due for a course correction. In my midforties, I had yet to have anything truly bad happen to me. The opposite was true: I’d done tremendously well. At the university where I taught, I’d just been promoted to full professor. A trilogy of novels I had begun writing on a lark had been purchased for scads of money. We’d just bought a new house we loved, and my daughter had been admitted to a terrific school, where she’d be starting in the fall. My children were happy and healthy, and my newfound financial success had allowed my wife to quit her stressful job as a high school teacher to look after our family and pursue her interests. It had been a long, hard climb, but we’d made it—more than made it—and I spent a great deal of time patting myself on the back for this success. I’d gone out hunting and brought back a mammoth.

Everything was right as rain.

In hindsight, this self-congratulatory belief in my ability to chart my own destiny was patently ridiculous. Worldly things are worldly things; two bad seconds on the highway can take them all away, and sooner or later something’s going to come along that does just that.

Once you have it, this information is unignorable, and it seems to me that you can do one of two things with it. You can decide that life doesn’t make sense, or you can decide that it does. In version one, the universe is a stone-cold place. Life is a series of accumulations—friends, lovers, children, memories, the contents of your 401(k)—followed by a rapid casting off (i.e., you die). Your wife is just somebody you met at a party; your children are biological accretions of yourself; your affection for them is nothing more than a bit of well-engineered firmware to guarantee the perpetuation of the species. All pleasures are sensory, since nothing goes deeper than the senses, and pain, whether psychological or physical, is meaningless bad news you can only endure till it’s over.

Version two assumes that life, with all its vicissitudes, possesses an organized pattern of meaning. Grief means something, joy means something, love means something. This meaning isn’t always obvious and is sometimes maddeningly elusive; had my wife and daughter been killed that afternoon on the highway, I would have been hard-pressed to take solace in religion’s customary clichés. (It is likely that the only thing that would have prevented me from committing suicide, apart from my own physical cowardice, would have been my son, into whom I would have poured all my love and sorrow.) But it’s there if you look for it, and the willingness to search—whether this search finds expression in religious ritual or attentive care for one’s children or a long run through falling autumn leaves—is what is meant, I think, by faith.

But herein lies the problem: we don’t generally come to these things on our own. Somebody has to lay the groundwork, and the best way to accomplish this is with a story, since that’s how children learn most things. My Catholic upbringing was halfhearted and unfocused, but it made an impression. At any time during my thirty-year exile from organized religion, I could have stepped into a Sunday mass and recited the entire liturgy by heart. For better or worse, my God was a Catholic God, the God of smells and bells and the BVM and the saints and all the rest, and I didn’t have to build this symbolic narrative on my own. My wife is much the same; I have no doubt that the image of the merciful deity she addressed in the parking lot came straight off a stained-glass window, circa 1975. Yet out of arrogance or laziness or the shallow notion that modern, freethinking parents ought to allow children to decide these things for freethinking parents ought to allow children to decide these things for themselves, we’d given our daughter none of it. We’d left her in the dark forest of her own mind, and what she’d concluded was that there was no God at all.

This came about in the aftermath of our move to Texas—a very churchy place. My daughter was entering the first grade; my son was still being hauled around in a basket. Houston is a sophisticated and diverse city, with great food, interesting architecture, and a vivid cultural life, but the suburbs are the suburbs, and the neighborhood where we settled was straight out of Betty Friedan’s famous complaint: horseshoe streets of more or less identical one-story, 2,500square-foot houses, built on reclaimed ranchland in the 1960s. A neighborhood of 2.4 children per household, fathers who raced off to work each morning before the dew had dried, moms who pushed their kids around in strollers and passed out snacks at soccer games and volunteered at the local elementary school. We were, after ten years living in a dicey urban neighborhood in Philadelphia, eager for something a little calmer, more controlled, and we’d chosen the house in a hurry, not realizing what we were getting into. Among our first visitors was an older woman from down the block. She presented us with a plate of brownies and proceeded to list the denominational affiliations of each of our neighbors. I was, to put it mildly, pretty weirded-out. I counted about a dozen churches within just a few miles of my house—Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ—and all of them were huge. People talked about Jesus as if he were sitting in their living room, flipping through a magazine; nearly every day I saw a car with a bumper sticker that read, Warning: In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned. Stapled to the local religious culture was a socially conservative brand of politics I found abhorrent. To hear homosexuality described as an “abomination” felt like I’d parachuted into the Middle Ages. I couldn’t argue with my neighbors’ devotion to their offspring—the neighborhood revolved around children—but it seemed to me that Jesus Christ, whoever he was, had been pretty clear on the subject of loving everybody.

This was the current my daughter swam in every day at school. Not many months had passed before one of her friends, the daughter of evangelicals, expressed concern that Iris was going to hell. Those were the words she used: “I don’t want you to go to hell, Iris.” The girl in question was adorable, with ringlets of dark hair, perfect manners, and lovely, doting parents. No doubt she thought she was doing Iris a kindness when she urged her to attend church with her family to avoid this awful fate. But that wasn’t how I saw the situation. I dropped to a defensive crouch and came out swinging. “Tell her that hell’s a fairy tale,” I said. “Tell her to leave you alone.”

The better choice would have been to offer her a more positive, less punishing The better choice would have been to offer her a more positive, less punishing view of creation—less hell, more heaven—and over time my wife and I tried to do just that. But when you’re seven years old, “love your neighbor as yourself” sounds a lot like “don’t forget to brush your teeth”—words to live by but hardly a description of humanity’s place in the cosmos. As the playground evangelism continued, so did my daughter’s contempt, and why wouldn’t it? She’d learned it from me. I don’t recall when she announced she was an atheist. All I remember was that she did this from the back seat of the car, sitting in a booster chair.

After the accident, my daughter spent the better part of a week in her closet.

From time to time I’d stop by and say, “Are you still in there?” Or “Hey, it’s

Daddy, how’s it going?” Or “Let me know if you need anything.”

“All good!” she said. “Thanks!”

There were things to sort out: an insurance claim to file, a replacement vehicle to acquire, arrangements to make for our summer vacation, for which we’d be leaving in two weeks. My wife and I were badly shaken. We had entered a new state: we were a family that had been nearly annihilated. Every few hours one of us would burst into tears. Genesis 2:24 speaks of spouses “cleaving” to each other, and that was what we did: we cleaved. We badly wanted to comfort our daughter, but she had made herself completely unreachable. Of course she’d be confused and angry; in a careless moment, her mother had nearly killed her. But when we probed her on the matter, she insisted this wasn’t so. Everything was peachy, she said. She just liked it in the closet. No worries, she’d be along soon.

A day later we received a phone call from the pastor whose car my wife’s had struck. At first I thought he was calling to get my insurance information, which I apologetically offered. He explained that the damage was minor, nothing even worth fixing, and that he had called to see if my wife and daughter were all right. Perfectly, I said, omitting my daughter’s temporary residence among her shirts and pants, and thanked him profusely.

“It’s a miracle,” he said. “I saw the whole thing. Nobody should have survived.”

He wasn’t the first to say this. The M-word was bandied about freely by virtually everyone we knew. The following afternoon we were visited by the woman who had collected Iris’s belongings: two cardboard boxes of books and clothes covered with highway grime and shards of glass, a suitcase that looked like it had been run over, and her violin, which had escaped its launch into the gulley unharmed. We chatted in the living room, replaying events. Like the pastor, she seemed a little dazed. When the conversation reached a resting place, she explained that she couldn’t leave until she’d seen Iris.

“Give me just a sec,” my wife said.

“Give me just a sec,” my wife said.

A minute later she appeared with our daughter. The woman rose from her chair, stepped toward Iris, and wrapped her in a hug. This display made my daughter visibly uncomfortable, as it would anyone. Why was this stranger hugging her? The woman’s face was full of inexpressible emotion; her eyes filmed with tears. My daughter endured her embrace as long as she could, then backed away.

“God protected you. You know that, don’t you?”

My daughter’s eyes darted around warily. “I guess.”

“You’re going to have a wonderful life. I just know it.”

We exchanged email addresses, knowing we would never use them, and said our goodbyes in the yard. When we returned to the house, Iris was still standing at the base of the stairs. I had never seen her look so freaked-out.

“God had nothing to do with it,” she said. “So don’t ask me to say he did.” And with that she headed back upstairs to her closet.

The psychologist, whom Iris nicknamed “Dr. Cuckoo,” told us not to worry. Iris was a levelheaded girl; hiding in the closet was a perfectly natural response to such a trauma. The best thing, she said, was to give our daughter space. She’d talk about it when the time was right.

I doubted this. Levelheaded, yes, but that was the problem. Doing a double gainer with a twist at 70 miles an hour, without so much as dropping your iPhone, was nothing that the rational mind could parse on its own. The psychologist also didn’t know my daughter like I did. Iris can be the most stubborn person on earth. This is one of her cardinal virtues when, for instance, she has a test and two papers due on the same day. She’ll stay up till 3:00 A.M. no matter how many times we tell her to go to bed, and get A’s on all three, proving herself right in the end. But she can also hold a grudge like nobody I’ve ever met, and a grudge with the cosmos is no simple matter. How do you forgive the world for being godless? When she declared her atheism from the booster seat, I’d thought two things. First, How cute! The world’s only atheist who eats from the kids’ menu! I couldn’t have been more charmed if she’d said she’d been reading Schopenhauer. The second thing was, This can’t last. How could a girl who still believed in the tooth fairy fail to come around to the idea of a cosmic protector? And yet she didn’t. Her atheism had hardened to such a degree that any mention of spiritual matters made her snort milk out her nose. By inserting nothing in its stead, we had inadvertently given her the belief that she was the author of her own fate, and my wife’s newfound faith in a God-watched universe was as much a betrayal as crashing their car into the guardrail over a minor argument. It was a philosophical reversal my daughter couldn’t process, and it left her feeling utterly alone.

My wife and I felt perfectly awful. In due course our daughter emerged, with one condition: she didn’t want to discuss the accident. Not then, not ever. This seemed unhealthy, but you can’t make a twelve-year-old girl talk about something she doesn’t want to. We left for Cape Cod, where we’d rented a house for the month of July. I’d just turned in a manuscript to my editor and under ordinary circumstances would have been looking forward to the time away, but the trip seemed like too much data. Everyone was antsy and out of sorts, and the weather was horrible. The only person who enjoyed himself was our son, who was too young to comprehend the scope of events and was happy drawing pictures all day.

The school year resumed, and with it life’s ordinary rhythms. My wife began looking around for a church to attend. To say this was a sore spot with Iris would be a gross understatement. She hated the idea and said so. “Fine with me,” she said, “if you want to get all Jesus-y. Just leave me out of it.”

It didn’t happen right away. God may have shown his face to my wife in the parking lot, but he’d failed to share his address. We were stymied by the things we always had been: our jaundiced view of organized religion, the conservative social politics of most mainline denominations, the discomfiting business of praying aloud in the presence of people we didn’t know. And what, exactly, did we believe? Faith asks for a belief in God, which we had; religion asks for more, a great deal of it literal. Christian ritual was the most familiar, but neither of us believed that the Bible was the word of God or that Jesus Christ was a supernatural being who walked on water when he wasn’t turning it into wine. Certainly somebody by that name had existed; he’d gotten a lot of ink. He’d done and said some remarkable stuff, scared the living shit out of an imperial authority, and given humanity two thousand years’ worth of things to think about. But the son of God? Really? That Jesus was no more or less divine than the rest of us seemed to me the core of his message.

We wanted something, but we didn’t know what. Something with a little grace, a bit of wonder, the feeling of taking a few minutes out of each week to acknowledge how fortunate we were. We decided to give Unitarianism a shot. From the website, it seemed safe enough. Over loud objections, we made Iris come with us. The service was overseen by two ministers, a married couple, who took turns speaking from the altar, which seemed about as holy as the podium in a college classroom. After the hokey business of lighting the lamp, they droned on for half an hour about the importance of friendship. There were almost no kids in the congregation, or even anybody close to our age. It was a sea of whitehaired heads. After the service, everyone lingered in the lobby over coffee and stale cookies, but we beat a hasty retreat.

“Well, that was awkward,” Iris said.

It was. It had felt like sitting in the audience at a talk show. We tried a few more times, but our interest flagged. When, on the fourth Sunday, Iris found me making French toast in the kitchen in my bathrobe and asked why we weren’t going, I told her that I guessed church wasn’t for us after all. “Thank God,” she said, and laughed.

In the end, as in the scriptures, it was a child who led us. To our surprise, our son, Tuck, had become a secret Episcopalian. His school is affiliated with an Episcopal parish, and students attend chapel once a week. We’d always assumed this was the sort of wishy-washy, nondenominational fare most places dish out, but we were wrong. One day, apropos of nothing, as I was driving him home from school, he announced that he believed in Jesus.

“Really?” I said. “When did that happen?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged. “It just makes sense to me. Pastor

Lisa’s nice. We should go sometime.”

“To church, you mean?”

“Sure,” he said. “I think that would be great.”

Just like that, the matter was settled. We now go every week—the three of us. St. Stephen’s is located in a diverse neighborhood in Houston, and much of the congregation is gay or lesbian. There are protocols, but very loose ones, and the church has open communion and a terrific choir. Pastor Lisa is a woman in her fifties with a gray pageboy who wears blue jeans and Birkenstocks under her robe and gives a hug that feels like falling into bed. She knows I was raised Catholic, and she laughed when I told her that I didn’t mind that she “got some of the words wrong.” I have my doubts, as always, but it seems like a fine church to have them in. My son finds some of the service boring, as all children do, but he likes communion, which he calls his “force field for the week.” He has asked to be baptized next fall.

Will Iris be there? I hope so. But it’s her choice. She has yet to go with us. I know this makes her sad, and it makes me sad, too. It’s the first thing the three of us have ever done without her.

Three years after the accident, in spring 2012, I failed a blood test at my annual physical, then failed a biopsy and found myself, two months shy of my fiftieth birthday, facing a surgery that would tell me if I was going to see my children grow up. Two of my doctors assured me this would happen; a third said maybe grow up. Two of my doctors assured me this would happen; a third said maybe not. We were spending the summer on Cape Cod, where we’d bought a house, and in late July my wife and I flew back to Texas for my operation. When I awoke in the recovery room, my wife was standing over me, smiling. I was so dopey with painkillers that focusing on her face felt like trying to carry a piano up the stairs. “It’s over,” she said. “The margins were clear. You’re going to be okay.”

Two days after my surgery, I was instructed to walk. This sounded impossible, but I was determined. With my wife holding my arm, I shuffled up and down the hall of the ward, gritting my teeth against the discomfort of the catheter, which was the weirdest thing I’d ever felt. The last two months had pummeled me to psychological pieces, but the worst was over. Once again the car had rolled and we had walked away.

From the far end of the hall, a woman was approaching. Like a pair of ocean liners, we headed toward each other in slow motion. She was very thin and wearing a silk robe; like me, she was pulling an IV stand. Some greeting was called for, and she was the first to speak.

“May I give you something?”

We were within just a few feet of each other, and I saw what the situation was. Her body was leaving her; death was in her face.

“Of course.”

She gestured downward, indicating the pockets of her robe. “Pick one.”

I chose the left. With an uncertain hand she withdrew a wad of white cotton, tied with a bow. She placed it in my hand. It was an angel, made from a dish towel. To this she’d affixed a heart-shaped piece of laminated paper printed with these words from the Book of Numbers:

The Lord bless and keep you;

The Lord make his face shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you; And give you peace.

When I first learned about my illness, a very smart man told me that I should select an object. It could be anything, he said. A piece of jewelry. A spoon. A rock. Since I was a writer, maybe something to do with writing, such as a pen. It didn’t matter what it was. When I was afraid, he said, and thinking that I was going to die, I should take that object in my hand and put my fear inside it.

Wise as his counsel was, I’d never managed to do this. I’d tried one thing and then another. Nothing had felt right. This did. Not just right: miraculous.

then another. Nothing had felt right. This did. Not just right: miraculous.

“Bless you,” I said.

Two weeks later I returned to the Cape to complete my recovery. There wasn’t much I could do, but I was glad to be there. A few days before my diagnosis, I had bought a ten-year-old Audi convertible and shipped it north. Iris had just gotten her learner’s permit, and after a week of lounging around the house, I asked her if she’d take me for a drive. The day was sunny and hot. We put the top down and sped north, bisecting the peninsula on a rolling, two-lane road. From the passenger seat, I watched my daughter drive. In the past year a startling change had occurred. Iris wasn’t a kid anymore. She was taller than my wife, with a full, womanly shape. Her facial features had organized into mature proportions. Her hair, a honeyed red, swept away from her face in a stylish arc. She could have been mistaken for a college student, and often was. But the difference was more than physical; to look at my daughter was to know that she was somebody with a private, inner existence. She was standing at the edge of life; everything was ahead of her. All she had to do was let it come.

“How’s it feel?” I asked. She had perfect motorist’s manners: hands at ten and two, shoulders pressed back, eyes on the road. She was wearing large tortoiseshell sunglasses that would have been perfectly at home on Audrey Hepburn’s face. “Okay.”

“Not scary?”

She shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

Our destination was a beach on the Cape’s north side, called Sandy Neck. From there, on the clearest days, you can see all the way from Plymouth to Provincetown. We parked and got out of the car and walked to the little platform built to take in the view. I knew we couldn’t stay long; even standing was an effort.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” I said.

Iris was looking away. “You didn’t. Not really.”

“Well, I was scared. I’m glad you weren’t.”

She thought a moment. “That’s the thing. I knew I should have been. But I wasn’t. I actually feel kind of guilty about that.”

“There’s no reason you should.”

“It’s just . . .” She hunted for the words. “I don’t know. You’re you. I just can’t imagine you not being okay.”

She was wrong. Someday I wouldn’t be. Time and chance would do its work, as it does for all of us. But she didn’t need to hear that from me on a sunny summer day.

“Do you remember the accident?” I asked.

She laughed, a little nervously. “Well, duh.”

“I’ve always wondered. What were you doing in the closet?”

“Not much. Mostly watching Project Runway on my laptop.”

“And being mad at us.”

She shrugged. “That whole God thing really pissed me off. I mean, you guys can believe whatever you want. I just wanted Mom to feel the same way I did.”

“How did you feel?”

She didn’t answer right away. Boats were creeping across the horizon.

“Abandoned.”

We were silent for a time. I had a sudden vision of myself as old—an old man, being taken to the beach by his grown daughter. The dunes, the ocean, the rocky margin where they met—all would be the same, unchanged since I was boy. It was a sad thought, but it also made me happy in a way that seemed new. These things were years away, and with any luck, I would be around to see them.

“Are you doing all right? Do you need to go back?”

I nodded. “Probably I should get off my feet.”

We returned to the car. Three steps ahead of me, Iris moved to the passenger side, opened the door, and got in.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She looked around. “Oh, right,” she said, and laughed. “I’m the driver, aren’t I?”

She was sixteen years old. I hoped someday she’d remember how it felt, how invincible, how alive. I’d heard it said that one tenth of parenting is making mistakes; the other nine are prayer and letting go. “Yes,” I said. “You are.”

MEGHAN DAUM

[1921designs]

Find your beach

ACROSS THE WAY from our apartment—on Houston, I guess—there’s a new wall ad. The site is forty feet high, twenty feet wide. It changes once or twice a year.

Whatever’s on that wall is my view: I look at it more than the sky or the new World Trade Center, more than the water towers, the passing cabs. It has a subliminal effect. Last semester it was a spot for high-end vodka, and while I wrangled children into their snowsuits, chock-full of domestic resentment, I’d find myself dreaming of cold martinis.

Before that came an ad so high-end I couldn’t tell what it was for. There was no text—or none that I could see—and the visual was of a yellow firebird set upon a background of hellish red. It seemed a gnomic message, deliberately placed to drive a sleepless woman mad. Once, staring at it with a newborn in my arms, I saw another mother, in the tower opposite, holding her baby. It was 4 A.M. We stood there at our respective windows, separated by a hundred feet of expensive New York air.

The tower I live in is university accommodation; so is the tower opposite. The idea occurred that it was quite likely that the woman at the window also wrote books for a living, and, like me, was not writing anything right now. Maybe she was considering antidepressants. Maybe she was already on them. It was hard to tell. Certainly she had no way of viewing the ad in question, not without opening her window, jumping, and turning as she fell. I was her view. I was the ad for what she already had.

But that was all some time ago. Now the ad says, Find your beach. The bottle of beer—it’s an ad for beer—is very yellow and the background luxury-holidayblue. It seems to me uniquely well placed, like a piece of commissioned public art in perfect sympathy with its urban site. The tone is pure Manhattan. Echoes can be found in the personal growth section of the bookstore (“Find your happy”), and in exercise classes (“Find your soul”), and in the therapist’s office (“Find your self”). I find it significant that there exists a more expansive, national version of this ad that runs in magazines, and on television.

In those cases photographic images are used, and the beach is real and seen in full. Sometimes the tag line is expanded, too: When life gives you limes . . . Find your beach. But the wall I see from my window marks the entrance to SoHo, a district that is home to media moguls, entertainment lawyers, every variety of celebrity, some students, as well as a vanishingly small subset of rent-controlled artists and academics.

Collectively we, the people of SoHo, consider ourselves pretty sophisticated consumers of media. You can’t put a cheesy ad like that past us. And so the ad has been reduced to its essence—a yellow undulation against a field of blue— and painted directly onto the wall, in a bright pop-art style. The mad men know that we know the SoHo being referenced here: the SoHo of Roy Lichtenstein and Ivan Karp, the SoHo that came before Foot Locker, Sephora, Prada, frozen yogurt. That SoHo no longer exists, of course, but it’s part of the reason we’re all here, crowded on this narrow strip of a narrow island. Whoever placed this ad knows us well.

Find your beach. The construction is odd. A faintly threatening mixture of imperative and possessive forms, the transformation of a noun into a state of mind. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. On the one hand it means, simply, “Go out and discover what makes you happy.” Pursue happiness actively, as Americans believe it their right to do. And it’s an ad for beer, which makes you happy in the special way of all intoxicants, by reshaping reality around a sensation you alone are having. So, even more precisely, the ad means “Go have a beer and let it make you happy.” Nothing strange there. Except beer used to be sold on the dream of communal fun: have a beer with a buddy, or lots of buddies. People crowded the frame, laughing and smiling. It was a lie about alcohol—as this ad is a lie about alcohol—but it was a different kind of lie, a wide-framed lie, including other people.

Here the focus is narrow, almost obsessive. Everything that is not absolutely necessary to your happiness has been removed from the visual horizon. The dream is not only of happiness, but of happiness conceived in perfect isolation. Find your beach in the middle of the city. Find your beach no matter what else is happening. Do not be distracted from finding your beach. Find your beach even if—as in the case of this wall painting—it is not actually there. Create this beach inside yourself. Carry it with you wherever you go. The pursuit of happiness has always seemed to me a somewhat heavy American burden, but in Manhattan it is conceived as a peculiar form of duty.

In an exercise class recently the instructor shouted at me, at all of us: “Don’t let your mind set limits that aren’t really there.” You’ll find this attitude all over the island. It is encouraged and reflected in the popular culture, especially the movies, so many of which, after all, begin their creative lives here, in Manhattan. According to the movies it’s only our own limited brains that are keeping us

from happiness. In the future we will take a pill to make us limitless (and ideal citizens of Manhattan), or we will, like Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, use 100 percent of our brain’s capacity instead of the mythic 10. In these formulations the world as it is has no real claim on us. Our happiness, our miseries, our beaches, or our blasted heaths—they are all within our own power to create, or destroy. On Tina Fey’s television show 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy—the consummate citizen of this new Manhattan—deals with problems by crushing them with his “mind vise.”

The beach is always there: you just have to conceive of it. It follows that those who fail to find their beach are, in the final analysis, mentally fragile; in

Manhattan terms, simply weak. Jack Donaghy’s verbal swordplay with Liz Lemon was a comic rendering of the various things many citizens of Manhattan have come to regard as fatal weakness: childlessness, obesity, poverty. To find your beach you have to be ruthless. Manhattan is for the hard-bodied, the hardminded, the multitasker, the alpha mamas and papas. A perfect place for selfempowerment—as long as you’re pretty empowered to begin with. As long as you’re one of these people who simply do not allow anything—not even reality —to impinge upon that clear field of blue.

There is a kind of individualism so stark that it seems to dovetail with an existentialist creed: Manhattan is right at that crossroads. You are pure potential in Manhattan, limitless, you are making yourself every day. When I am in England each summer, it’s the opposite: all I see are the limits of my life. The brain that puts a hairbrush in the fridge, the leg that radiates pain from the hip to the toe, the lovely children who eat all my time, the books unread and unwritten.

And casting a shadow over it all is what Philip Larkin called “extinction’s alp,” no longer a stable peak in a distance, finally becoming rising ground. In England even at the actual beach I cannot find my beach. I look out at the freezing forty-degree water, at the families squeezed into ill-fitting wetsuits, huddled behind windbreakers, approaching a day at the beach with the kind of stoicism once conjured for things like the Battle of Britain, and all I can think is what funny, limited creatures we are, subject to every wind and wave, building castles in the sand that will only be knocked down by the generation coming up beneath us.

When I land at JFK, everything changes. For the first few days it is a shock: I have to get used to old New York ladies beside themselves with fury that I have stopped their smooth elevator journey and got in with some children. I have to remember not to pause while walking in the street—or during any fluid-moving city interaction—unless I want to utterly exasperate the person behind me. Each man and woman in this town is in pursuit of his or her beach and God help you if you get in their way. I suppose it should follow that I am happier in pragmatic England than idealist Manhattan, but I can’t honestly say that this is so. You don’t come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn’t a strong aspect of your personality. “A reality shaped around your own desires”—there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

It is also a fair description of what it is to write fiction. And to live in a city where everyone has essentially the same tunnel vision and obsessive focus as a novelist is to disguise your own sociopathy among the herd. Objectively all the same limits are upon me in Manhattan as they are in England. I walk a ten-block radius every day, constrained in all the usual ways by domestic life, reduced to writing about whatever is right in front of my nose. But the fact remains that here I dowrite, the work gets done.

Even if my Manhattan productivity is powered by a sociopathic illusion of my own limitlessness, I’m thankful for it, at least when I’m writing. There’s a reason so many writers once lived here, beyond the convenient laundromats and the take-out food, the libraries and cafés. We have always worked off the energy generated by this town, the moneymaking and tower-building as much as the street art and underground cultures. Now the energy is different: the underground has almost entirely disappeared. (You hope there are still young artists in Washington Heights, in the Barrio, or Stuyvesant Town, but how much longer can they hang on?) A twisted kind of energy radiates instead off the SoulCycling mothers and marathon-running octogenarians, the entertainment lawyers glued to their iPhones and the moguls building five “individualized” condo townhouses where once there was a hospital.

It’s not a pretty energy, but it still runs what’s left of the show. I contribute to it. I ride a stationary bike like the rest of them. And then I despair when Shakespeare and Co. closes in favor of another Foot Locker. There’s no way to be in good faith on this island anymore. You have to crush so many things with your mind vise just to get through the day. Which seems to me another aspect of the ad outside of my window: willful intoxication. Or, to put it more snappily, “You don’t have to be high to live here, but it helps.”

Finally the greatest thing about Manhattan is the worst thing about Manhattan: self-actualization. Here you will be free to stretch yourself to your limit, to find the beach that is yours alone. But sooner or later you will be sitting on that beach wondering what comes next. I can see my own beach ahead now, as the children grow, as the practical limits fade; I see afresh the huge privilege of my position; it reclarifies itself. Under the protection of a university I live on one of the most privileged strips of built-up beach in the world, among people who believe they privileged strips of built-up beach in the world, among people who believe they have no limits and who push me, by their very proximity, into the same useful delusion, now and then.

It is such a good town in which to work and work. You can find your beach here, find it falsely but convincingly, still thinking of Manhattan as an isle of writers and artists—of downtown underground wildlings and uptown intellectuals—against all evidence to the contrary. Oh, you still see them occasionally here and there, but unless they are under the protection of a university—or have sold that TV show—they are all of them, every single last one of them, in Brooklyn.

[1921designs]

My uniform

THERE’S A PAIR of pants I wore almost every day for the first five years I knew my husband. They were what I like to call sport pants, which differ from all-out sweatpants (or yoga pants, as fancy people now like to call them) in that they were made of a sturdy cotton twill rather than jersey material. Cut comfortably loose, the elastic waistband was the only place where the pants made any contact with my body. Anything could happen inside those pants without detection. I could be fat or less fat or kind of slender. They were extraordinarily utilitarian and patently unsexy. Nuns might opt to wear them. Or park rangers. Or seventyyear-old piano teachers. Or butch lesbians who captained coed Ultimate Frisbee teams. Or me. I wore them so often my husband took to referring to them as my uniform.

I wasn’t always so blasé when it came to my husband and clothes. The first time I slept with him—back when he was essentially a stranger to me, on the second night I knew him—I wore a black lace getup that’s called a baby-doll nightie. It was a little handful of a thing I’d purchased at a Goodwill just before I met him, when I was twenty-seven and constantly roaming thrift stores on the hunt for something that would help me project the sexy image of myself I was hoping for. I bought it even though I’ve always been profoundly confused by lingerie. Isn’t sex about something that clothes are the opposite of? I could never quite discern when, in the order of things, I was meant to put lingerie on when the whole point was ripping things off.

These were the questions in my mind on the second night that I knew the man who was not yet my husband, after I excused myself from the bedroom where we’d been ferociously making out and ducked into the bathroom across the hall. As I went, I grabbed the just-purchased nightie from the top drawer of my dresser, a gob of cheap black lace in my hand. Alone, before the mirror, I removed my regular clothes and put on the nightie and studied myself. The nightie had thin shoulder straps, a form-fitting see-through bodice that gently mashed my breasts upward, and a flouncy short-skirted bottom. If the outfit had a title it would be either Slutty Cowgirl or Pretty Pirate. I looked awesome but felt ridiculous. Was I really going to return to the bedroom dressed like this? It seemed desperate and dumb and yet I couldn’t help myself. I wanted him to see me like this, to seem to him to be the kind of woman who nonchalantly ranged around her place in a black lace thingamajig that scarcely covered her rear, so I walked into the bedroom and stood ever so briefly before him as he gazed at me, reclining on my futon on the floor, and then I got into bed with him and he pulled the damn thing off.

I never wore that baby-doll nightie or any other piece of lingerie again. My future husband and I became lovers and then we got married and the idea of putting that nightie on became just about the last thing on this earth I would do. I’d bought it for the sole purpose of finding and fostering intimacy, but in fact I wore it on the night when we were the least intimate, when I was projecting a slightly fraudulent image of myself to him instead of the actual me. Which, for better or worse, is a woman who wears pants a nun would find appealing.

The cool thing is, my husband finds them appealing, too. We fell in love while I wore and wore and wore those pants. The pants inside of which undetectable things can happen.

The black lace nightie disappeared soon after I wore it that one time. I handed it over to the Goodwill, tossing it back into the endless thrift-store stream from which it came, into the hands of another woman with fantastical dreams about herself. The pants lasted and lasted, for five years or more, until one day I understood it was the end of them. They’d served their time. I’d worn them so long and so often they’d become threadbare. The elastic of the waist had given way; the hemline had frayed. Instead of putting them on, I put them in the garbage can.

My husband was out of town at the time, working on a project that kept him away from home for a couple of months. It didn’t seem right that he wasn’t there to witness the end of the pants. My uniform. Our history. So I fished them out of the garbage can and cut out the crotch with a pair of scissors. It was a neat black rectangle of fabric that only two people on the planet would recognize for what it was.

I folded it into an envelope addressed to him. I didn’t include a note. I put it in the mail and sat for a long time thinking about it, imagining him. How he’d laugh when he opened the envelope and realized what he was holding. How he’d press it to his nose and inhale.

KELLY SUNDBERG

[1921designs]

It will look like a sunset

I WAS TWENTY-SIX, having spent most of my twenties delaying adulthood, and he was twenty-four and enjoyed a reputation as a partier. The pregnancy was a surprise, and we married four months later.

As my belly stretched outward with the tightness of the baby, my limbs grew heavy. I napped constantly on a long hand-me-down couch, the summer heat giving me nightmares. I dreamt of a woman floating in the corner staring at me, and I woke with my heart racing. One afternoon a hummingbird flew through the open door of the apartment to the window in the corner and beat at the glass. It was panicked, trying to turn glass into sky. I wrapped my hands around it, the hummingbird heart pulsing against my palms, then released it on the stoop.

They say that a bird in the house is an omen. It can mean pregnancy. Or death. Or both.

Eight years later, the police came to our door. When the younger one asked about my foot, I said that it didn’t hurt. I told him it was no big deal, but when he asked for my driver’s license, I stood up and found that I couldn’t walk, that my foot was the size of a football, and it was bleeding. The bowl Caleb had shattered on it wasn’t a little bowl like I had described. It was a heavy ceramic serving bowl, and I would need to wear a soft boot for a month and get a tetanus shot, and there would always be a scar shot through the top of my foot like a red star.

In the beginning of our relationship, I slept in his cabin in the woods with no indoor plumbing. I had to pee, so I let myself out. The ground was snow-covered and cold and I didn’t feel like walking to the outhouse, so I went around to the side and squatted in the moonlight. The moon turned the snow into a million stars while my gentle lover slumbered in the warmth—such happiness.

We didn’t want a church wedding, but our families insisted. Faith was what made marriage sacred. Faith was what kept people together.

I had doubts about marrying him so soon. Sometimes he would disappear for a straight week and return apologetic, smelling of alcohol. His friends gave each other looks that said they knew something I did not. One friend said jokingly, “How on earth did Caleb get you to go out with him?” Coming from a friend, the question seemed odd, but I thought it was just the way they ribbed each other.

When I met him, he charmed me. My best friend said, “You’ll love Caleb. He lives in a cabin in the woods that he built by himself.” A former wilderness ranger, I was attracted to ruggedness and solitude. Caleb was a writer, and he was funny. One day he joked in bed about what our rapper names would be. I said mine would be “Awesome Possum.” He improvised a rap song titled “Get in My Pouch!” I couldn’t stop giggling. I had never met a man who could make me laugh like he could.

My love for him was real, and I didn’t want to be a single mother.

The young policeman told Caleb, “Go to your parents. Get away for a couple of days. Just let things calm down.”

The young policeman told me, “It’s all right. My wife and I fight. Things get crazy. Sometimes you just need time apart.” I nodded my head in agreement, but I wanted to ask, “Do you beat your wife, too?”

Before our son turned two, we moved to Caleb’s home state of West Virginia. He wanted to be closer to his family. There would be more opportunity for work there. His parents owned a rental house that they would sell to us. There were many compelling reasons for the move, but once there, he was the only friend I had. The loneliness was inescapable. This was common, I told myself. My parents had been married for over thirty years, and I don’t remember my father ever having a close friend. I told myself that he was enough for me.

When the older policeman saw the swelling, the black-and-blue, and the toes like little sausage links, his expression turned to dismay. “That’s bad. That looks broken,” he said. “Ma’am, does your husband have a phone number we can reach him at? We need him to come back.”

They waited outside, and I called Caleb. “I’m sorry,” I said. “They are going to arrest you.”

He said he already knew.

He left his phone on while they arrested him so I could listen. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Did she hit you?” one of the officers asked.

“Because we can arrest her, too.” Caleb answered honestly. He said no.

We were together for almost two years before he was violent with me. First he We were together for almost two years before he was violent with me. First he pushed me against a wall. It was two more years before he hit me, and another year after that before he hit me again. It happened so slowly, then so fast.

While the older policeman arrested Caleb, the younger one waited with me for the paramedics to arrive. “Is he going to lose his job?” I asked.

“No, probably not,” he said.

“Is he going to leave me?” I asked.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

I wanted him to hug me so I could hide my face in the folds of his black uniform. I crumpled into the rocking chair instead. “He’s going to leave me,” I said.

When our elderly neighbor developed dementia and one night thought a boy was hiding under her bed, Caleb stayed with her. When the child of an administrative assistant in Caleb’s department needed a heart transplant, Caleb went to the assistant’s house and helped him put down wood floors in his basement to create a playroom for the little boy. When my dad needed help installing new windows in the house, or mowing the lawn, or chopping wood, Caleb was always ready to help. I was so grateful to be married to someone so generous with his time, so loving.

The young policeman called for an ambulance. The EMTs looked at my foot. They didn’t ask about what happened. They just told me it looked bad, that it could be broken. They asked me if I wanted to go to the emergency room, but I declined, so they instructed me to see a doctor and made me sign a waiver saying they weren’t responsible if I didn’t get follow-up care. And then I was alone in our home.

Two years after we moved, I started graduate school and finally made some friends, but it was hard to spend time with them. I had to lie: I shut my arm in the door. I tripped on a rug and hit my face on the table. I don’t know where that bruise came from. I think I did it in my sleep. I think I’m anemic. I just bruise so easily.

Once Caleb said to me, “You probably wish that someone would figure out where those bruises are coming from. You probably wish someone knew, so that things could change.” He said it with such sadness.

After the arrest, I hobbled around in denial for a few days until a concerned

After the arrest, I hobbled around in denial for a few days until a concerned friend pushed me into getting the foot examined.

I was embarrassed at the urgent-care center. I told the nurse, “It’s okay. He’s already been arrested. I don’t need anything. I’m safe,” but he didn’t seem to believe me. The nurse put me in a wheelchair even though I insisted I could walk, and the doctor touched and turned my foot with such care that, out of some sort of misguided impulse, I almost blurted out, “Mom!” But I was thirty-four years old, and the distance between my mother and me was punctuated by so many mountains that she couldn’t have saved me.

Caleb wanted to change. He got therapy. He went to anger management. He did everything right. We were allies. Together we were going to fix this problem.

He started taking medication shortly after our sixth anniversary. Every time he was violent with me, he would go to a psychiatrist who increased his dosage. I thought the psychiatrist could fix him.

He wasn’t supposed to drink on the medication, but he did. One night he was in a stupor and staring at something. “What are you looking at?” I asked.

“Myself,” he said. “That’s me sitting in that chair.” He pointed at an empty chair across the room. “That me is laughing at me.” His eyes were confused, sad.

“Are you manipulating me?” I asked, worried.

“I’m not the one who manipulates you,” he said. He gestured toward the chair again, his voice quickening, earnest almost. “He’s the one who manipulates you.

It’s not me.”

I was so tired. I didn’t know what to say. “You should go to bed.”

His eyes turned from sadness to rage. He stood up and went to the stairs, then turned back to me and said, “I hope you get chlamydia and die.”

Shortly before I left him, I told a counselor that my husband was hitting me and showed her the bruises. She held me while I wept in her arms. I then told a close friend that he yelled at me and called me names, but I didn’t yet tell her he was beating me.

My counselor said, “You are taking everything he says and playing it on repeat over and over again. You have to stop the tape.” But I couldn’t stop the tape. I heard over and over:

You are a fucking cunt. You are a fucking cunt. You are a fucking cunt. You are a fucking cunt. You are a fucking cunt. You are a fucking cunt. You are a fucking cunt.

And then his voice became my voice:

I am a fucking cunt.

“You can’t hold the things I say when I’m mad against me,” he said. “That isn’t fair. Those aren’t the things I mean.”

At the urgent care, the doctor said, “This will take a long time to heal. It will change color over time. It will look like a sunset.” As I drove home, I heard the words over and over:

It will look like a sunset. It will look like a sunset. It will look like a sunset. It will look like a sunset. It will look like a sunset. It will look like a sunset. It will look like a sunset.

I could never bring myself to leave. Instead I was a regular at the Travelodge. I always returned home before morning, keeping the hotel key card just in case, then climbing into bed and wrapping my arms around Caleb’s back. All of the usual suspects drew me back—concerns about our six-year-old, money, where we would live, and love. I still loved him. I told myself he would get better.

In sickness and in health.Those were my vows in that little church in Idaho where we held hands while sunlight filtered through stained glass and spring lilacs bloomed outside. Caleb was sick.

He only hit me in the face once. A red bruise bloomed across my cheek, and my eye was split and oozing. Afterward we both sat on the bathroom floor, exhausted. “You made me hit you in the face,” he said mournfully. “Now everyone is going to know.”

A month or so before his arrest, I thought I was losing my hair from stress. In the shower, red strands swam in the water by my feet. Chunks were stuck to my fingers. It didn’t matter. I hadn’t felt pretty in years.

When I rubbed the shampoo into my scalp, the skin was tender, and I realized I wasn’t losing my hair. He had ripped it out, and I hadn’t even felt it.

I went into a cave when he hit me. I curled into my body like a slug, then traveled into a deep darkness where I felt nothing. I heard his voice, his fists, the blasts in my ears from the blows to the side of my head. I heard my own screaming.

Deep in that cave, it wasn’t real, even as it was happening.

What was real was when we lay in bed, our son between us—my head on my husband’s shoulder, his head resting on mine—and our son said, “The whole family is cuddled up.”

“I’m not the type of person to hit a woman,” he said. “So it must be you. You are the one who brings this out in me. I would not be like this if I was with a different woman.”

The same night that Caleb pulled out my hair, he punched me in the spine with such force that my body arched back as though it had been shocked with electricity. I was jolted out of my cave. He did it again. “No,” I screamed. I could not protect myself.

My only protection was the darkness—the dissociation. I hadn’t felt him ripping out hair, but when he hit me in the spine, the pain was too intense. That part of my body was too vulnerable. I couldn’t curl up. I couldn’t wrap my arms around it.

I was present for what was happening. I stopped breathing for a moment. He paused.

It was as though he, too, felt that I was present, and he stopped. I couldn’t have been human to him in those moments.

He never raped me, so there’s that.

I left him two days after he was arrested, but I wasn’t ready. I still wasn’t ready.

We were one of those couples that others liked to be around. We laughed a lot, respected each other, and supported each other’s work. We loved the same things: cooking Thai food, impromptu dance parties in the living room, Friday Night Lights marathons. We always found time for date nights. We vacationed in Greece, New York City, and Glacier National Park. We emailed each other silly videos during the day when we were at work. He phoned me from the car, five minutes after leaving the house, just to talk.

The day that I left him, I called Rebecca, a kind and accepting friend whom I knew would help. It wasn’t an easy call to make.

She lived with her partner, and they let my son and me stay with them for a month until we had our own place. She and I had only known each other for a little over a year. I told her about the beatings, how Caleb broke my phone when I tried to call for help, how he pulled me out from underneath the bed by my ankles, how I hid shaking in the closet while he raged, how he always found me, how there was no safe place for me.

When I saw the fear in her eyes, I understood the magnitude of what was happening.

happening.

Of everyone I had dated, he was the gentlest. I loved his soft hands, his embraces, his kind heart.

He wrote me love letters, rubbed my feet, took me out to lunch, got up first in the mornings with our son so that I could sleep in. He took care of me. He was more often kind to me than unkind.

Sometimes, when I’m cooking dinner by myself, I can feel the way he would lay his head on my shoulder while I stirred a pot, the way he would turn me around and kiss me, tell me how much he loved my cooking, how beautiful I was, how lucky he was.

On Thanksgiving Day, Caleb took our son to his family’s annual Thanksgiving dinner. While they ate turkey and dressing around the oak table I had eaten at so many times before, I returned to my home with Rebecca and threw as many things as I could fit into laundry baskets, then stuffed them into the back seat of my car. I packed my son’s Legos, enough blankets for us to sleep on the floor, and my work clothes, but I left behind anything sentimental. Our wedding photo was on a table, the glass broken. I had thrown it on the ground.

After packing, Rebecca and I ate at a Chinese buffet attached to a casino because it was the only place open in three counties. The future loomed before me like a buffet full of hungry, lonely people.

My favorite photo of Caleb and me is a self-portrait taken on a beach at Ecola State Park on the Oregon coast. We had hiked down a steep trail, stopping to lunch on smoked salmon and bagels, and ended up on a beach. The tide was low, and sand dollars dotted the shore. We scooped them up like prizes. We ran into the surf. We hugged. In the photo we are both smiling, our heads pressed together.

When I look at that photo now, I wonder, Where are those people? Where did they go?

Just to the right of us was a cave. I had wanted to go in it, but the tide was coming in, and I was afraid of getting trapped and drowning.

Six months after I left Caleb, I went home to Idaho for the summer. After that I was moving to another state. It was over. The counselor at the domestic violence shelter was proud of me. So many women never get out. I didn’t feel proud. I didn’t want to get out. I wanted to keep dancing with Caleb, keep sending funny didn’t want to get out. I wanted to keep dancing with Caleb, keep sending funny emails to each other, keep cuddling with our son between us.

There are days when I still wish that he would beg me to take him back, promise to change, actually change. This will never happen. Even if he never hit me again, my body will always remember that fist on my back.

In Idaho, the state where Caleb and I met, where we had our son, I drove the sun-baked streets. There was the apartment where Caleb sat next to me on the couch, nervously wiped his hand across his forehead, and said in a halting voice,

“Kelly, I want to marry you.”

There was the house where our baby slept in a basket by the bed. When he cried, I nursed him while Caleb draped his arm around my waist, nuzzling his head into my hair.

There was the riverside trail where we pushed the stroller and fantasized over which fancy house we would buy if we ever had any money, where our toddler threw sticks into the river, where Caleb scooped him up and held him upside down while we all giggled.

There was the river where, in winter, our dog slid out onto the ice and into the cold water. Caleb stretched out on the ice and reached his hands out to our dog while I watched, terrified. “I can’t lose you both,” I screamed.

I wondered if it would have happened if we had stayed in Idaho.

But then there was the house where he first pushed me up against a wall, where he backed me into the corner, where he threw our baby’s bouncer. The neighbor watched, worried, from her stoop while he put the broken pieces in the trash can on the curb and I cried in the window.

The same house where my mother took me into the backyard and said, “Listen to me. I have friends who have left their husbands. I have seen it on the other side. It is not better on the other side. Try hard. Try hard before you give up.” I tried so hard.

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Growing obese people and the healthcare system

The growing number of overweight people is putting a strain on the health care system in an effort to deal with the health issues involved. Some people think that the best way to deal with this problem is to introduce more physical education lessons in the school curriculum. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

With the rise in the obese population, medical professionals are enduring a heightened load to resolve health related problems. One school of thought contends that this strain can be best mitigated if students take more classes on physical education. In my view, there are certain valid and irrefutable arguments against the proposal; therefore, I am predisposed to disavow it.

One fundamental reason why I am in disaccord with the brought forth solution is that there is no data to support its success. Adding more lessons on physical education for students may result in a temporary plunge in the number of overweight students, but there is no evidence on how many of these will continue to perform exercising after passing out from their school. In case, if they do not perform these activities, it will not result in lowering the corpulent population, and the health care system will continue to suffer from treating illnesses related to high body fat. Even if this idea produces favorable results, statistically speaking, I don't think adolescents are an appropriate 'sample' of the 'population' i.e. any society. This idea fails to include other members of society, such as the adults and the elderly. Therefore, I adamantly oppose increasing the student's workload, especially related to physical education.

To add further credence to my position I note that this proposal may result in negative outcomes instead of positive ones, and in the end, may further increase the pressure on the medical professionals. School-going teenagers already have a significant amount of workload. Adding more courses into their curriculum might be more than they can chew. Hence, it may result in increasing their mental stress, which can induce brain-related illnesses, such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Several studies have found stress to be one of the main contributors to this type of illness. In this hypothetical scenario, students may have to see a psychiatrist and/or cognitive behavioral therapists for treatment, and the overall strain on the health care professionals may surge. Thus, I am inclined to gainsay the proposed solution.

In final analysis, I entirely disagree with the proposed idea to mitigate the stress on the modern health care system. This is because not only is there no evidence to support its potential success, but it appears to bring more harm than good into the bargain.

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A Message to the Twenty-First Century

FROM The New York Review of Books

On November 25, 1994, Isaiah Berlin accepted the honorary degree of

Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto. He prepared the following “short credo,” as he called it in a letter to a friend, for the ceremony, at which it was read on his behalf. Twenty years later, on October 23, 2014, The New York Review of Books printed Berlin’s remarks for the first time. For more on Isaiah Berlin, please see the Contributors’ Notes.

“IT WAS THE best of times, it was the worst of times.” With these words Dickens began his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities. But this cannot, alas, be said about our own terrible century. Men have for millennia destroyed each other, but the deeds of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon (who introduced mass killings in war), even the Armenian massacres, pale into insignificance before the Russian Revolution and its aftermath: the oppression, torture, murder which can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and the systematic falsification of information which prevented knowledge of these horrors for years—these are unparalleled. They were not natural disasters but preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.

I speak with particular feeling, for I am a very old man, and I have lived through almost the entire century. My life has been peaceful and secure, and I feel almost ashamed of this in view of what has happened to so many other human beings. I am not a historian, and so I cannot speak with authority on the causes of these horrors. Yet perhaps I can try.

They were, in my view, not caused by the ordinary negative human sentiments, as Spinoza called them—fear, greed, tribal hatreds, jealousy, love of power—though of course these have played their wicked part. They have been caused, in our time, by ideas; or rather, by one particular idea. It is paradoxical that Karl Marx, who played down the importance of ideas in comparison with impersonal social and economic forces, should, by his writings, have caused the transformation of the twentieth century, both in the direction of what he wanted and, by reaction, against it. The German poet Heine, in one of his famous writings, told us not to underestimate the quiet philosopher sitting in his study; if Kant had not undone theology, he declared, Robespierre might not have cut off the head of the king of France.

He predicted that the armed disciples of the German philosophers—Fichte, Schelling, and the other fathers of German nationalism—would one day destroy the great monuments of Western Europe in a wave of fanatical destruction before which the French Revolution would seem child’s play. This may have been unfair to the German metaphysicians, yet Heine’s central idea seems to me valid: in a debased form, the Nazi ideology did have roots in German antiEnlightenment thought. There are men who will kill and maim with a tranquil conscience under the influence of the words and writings of some of those who are certain that they know perfection can be reached.

Let me explain. If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.

The root conviction which underlies this is that the central questions of human life, individual or social, have one true answer which can be discovered. It can and must be implemented, and those who have found it are the leaders whose word is law. The idea that to all genuine questions there can be only one true answer is a very old philosophical notion. The great Athenian philosophers, Jews and Christians, the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Paris of Louis XIV, the French radical reformers of the eighteenth century, the revolutionaries of the nineteenth—however much they differed about what the answer was or how to discover it (and bloody wars were fought over this)—were all convinced that they knew the answer, and that only human vice and stupidity could obstruct its realization.

This is the idea of which I spoke, and what I wish to tell you is that it is false. Not only because the solutions given by different schools of social thought differ, and none can be demonstrated by rational methods—but for an even deeper reason. The central values by which most men have lived, in a great many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, are not always harmonious with each other. Some are, some are not. Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality—if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep. Perfect equality means that human liberties must be restrained so that the ablest and the most gifted are not permitted to advance beyond those who would inevitably lose if there were competition. Security, and indeed freedoms, cannot be preserved if freedom to subvert them is permitted. Indeed, not everyone seeks security or peace, otherwise some would not have sought glory in battle or in dangerous sports.

Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy. Creative imagination and spontaneity, splendid in themselves, cannot be fully reconciled with the need for planning, organization, careful and responsible calculation. Knowledge, the pursuit of truth—the noblest of aims—cannot be fully reconciled with the happiness or the freedom that men desire, for even if I know that I have some incurable disease this will not make me happier or freer. I must always choose: between peace and excitement, or knowledge and blissful ignorance. And so on.

So what is to be done to restrain the champions, sometimes very fanatical, of one or other of these values, each of whom tends to trample upon the rest, as the great tyrants of the twentieth century have trampled on the life, liberty, and human rights of millions because their eyes were fixed upon some ultimate golden future?

I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled—liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.

So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march—it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity,

a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood—eggs are broken, but the omelet is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelet and just go on breaking eggs.

I am glad to note that toward the end of my long life some realization of this is beginning to dawn. Rationality, tolerance, rare enough in human history, are not despised. Liberal democracy, despite everything, despite the greatest modern scourge of fanatical, fundamentalist nationalism, is spreading. Great tyrannies are in ruins, or will be—even in China the day is not too distant. I am glad that you to whom I speak will see the twenty-first century, which I feel sure can be only a better time for mankind than my terrible century has been. I congratulate you on your good fortune; I regret that I shall not see this brighter future, which I am convinced is coming. With all the gloom that I have been spreading, I am glad to end on an optimistic note. There really are good reasons to think that it is justified.

[1921designs]

A Message to the Twenty-First Century

On November 25, 1994, Isaiah Berlin accepted the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Toronto. He prepared the following “short credo,” as he called it in a letter to a friend, for the ceremony, at which it was read on his behalf. Twenty years later, on October 23, 2014, The New York Review of Books printed Berlin’s remarks for the first time. For more on Isaiah Berlin, please see the Contributors’ Notes.

“IT WAS THE best of times, it was the worst of times.” With these words Dickens began his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities. But this cannot, alas, be said about our own terrible century. Men have for millennia destroyed each other, but the deeds of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon (who introduced mass killings in war), even the Armenian massacres, pale into insignificance before the Russian Revolution and its aftermath: the oppression, torture, murder which can be laid at the doors of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and the systematic falsification of information which prevented knowledge of these horrors for years—these are unparalleled. They were not natural disasters but preventable human crimes, and whatever those who believe in historical determinism may think, they could have been averted.

I speak with particular feeling, for I am a very old man, and I have lived through almost the entire century. My life has been peaceful and secure, and I feel almost ashamed of this in view of what has happened to so many other human beings. I am not a historian, and so I cannot speak with authority on the causes of these horrors. Yet perhaps I can try.

They were, in my view, not caused by the ordinary negative human sentiments, as Spinoza called them—fear, greed, tribal hatreds, jealousy, love of power—though of course these have played their wicked part. They have been caused, in our time, by ideas; or rather, by one particular idea. It is paradoxical that Karl Marx, who played down the importance of ideas in comparison with impersonal social and economic forces, should, by his writings, have caused the transformation of the twentieth century, both in the direction of what he wanted and, by reaction, against it. The German poet Heine, in one of his famous writings, told us not to underestimate the quiet philosopher sitting in his study; if Kant had not undone theology, he declared, Robespierre might not have cut off the head of the king of France.

He predicted that the armed disciples of the German philosophers—Fichte, Schelling, and the other fathers of German nationalism—would one day destroy the great monuments of Western Europe in a wave of fanatical destruction before which the French Revolution would seem child’s play. This may have been unfair to the German metaphysicians, yet Heine’s central idea seems to me valid: in a debased form, the Nazi ideology did have roots in German antiEnlightenment thought. There are men who will kill and maim with a tranquil conscience under the influence of the words and writings of some of those who are certain that they know perfection can be reached.

Let me explain. If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any.

The root conviction which underlies this is that the central questions of human life, individual or social, have one true answer which can be discovered. It can and must be implemented, and those who have found it are the leaders whose word is law. The idea that to all genuine questions there can be only one true answer is a very old philosophical notion. The great Athenian philosophers, Jews and Christians, the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Paris of Louis XIV, the French radical reformers of the eighteenth century, the revolutionaries of the nineteenth—however much they differed about what the answer was or how to discover it (and bloody wars were fought over this)—were all convinced that they knew the answer, and that only human vice and stupidity could obstruct its realization.

This is the idea of which I spoke, and what I wish to tell you is that it is false. Not only because the solutions given by different schools of social thought differ, and none can be demonstrated by rational methods—but for an even deeper reason. The central values by which most men have lived, in a great many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, are not always harmonious with each other. Some are, some are not. Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality—if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep. Perfect equality means that human liberties must be restrained so that the ablest and the most gifted are not permitted to advance beyond those who would inevitably lose if there were competition. Security, and indeed freedoms, cannot be preserved if freedom to subvert them is permitted. Indeed, not everyone seeks security or peace, otherwise some would not have sought glory in battle or in dangerous sports.

Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy. Creative imagination and spontaneity, splendid in themselves, cannot be fully reconciled with the need for planning, organization, careful and responsible calculation. Knowledge, the pursuit of truth—the noblest of aims—cannot be fully reconciled with the happiness or the freedom that men desire, for even if I know that I have some incurable disease this will not make me happier or freer. I must always choose: between peace and excitement, or knowledge and blissful ignorance. And so on.

So what is to be done to restrain the champions, sometimes very fanatical, of one or other of these values, each of whom tends to trample upon the rest, as the great tyrants of the twentieth century have trampled on the life, liberty, and human rights of millions because their eyes were fixed upon some ultimate golden future?

I am afraid I have no dramatic answer to offer: only that if these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion. My point is that some values clash: the ends pursued by human beings are all generated by our common nature, but their pursuit has to be to some degree controlled—liberty and the pursuit of happiness, I repeat, may not be fully compatible with each other, nor are liberty, equality, and fraternity.

So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only too well that this is not a flag under which idealistic and enthusiastic young men and women may wish to march—it seems too tame, too reasonable, too bourgeois, it does not engage the generous emotions. But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity,

a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood—eggs are broken, but the omelet is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. And in the end the passionate idealists forget the omelet and just go on breaking eggs.

I am glad to note that toward the end of my long life some realization of this is beginning to dawn. Rationality, tolerance, rare enough in human history, are not despised. Liberal democracy, despite everything, despite the greatest modern scourge of fanatical, fundamentalist nationalism, is spreading. Great tyrannies are in ruins, or will be—even in China the day is not too distant. I am glad that you to whom I speak will see the twenty-first century, which I feel sure can be only a better time for mankind than my terrible century has been. I congratulate you on your good fortune; I regret that I shall not see this brighter future, which I am convinced is coming. With all the gloom that I have been spreading, I am glad to end on an optimistic note. There really are good reasons to think that it is justified.

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