Short Stories

The previous update featured a biographical sketch and review of Shirley Hazzard’s excellent novel The Great Fire (2003).  She was also a skilled short-story writer, which shows clearly in People in Glass Houses (1967).  Although the Picador edition (2004) has “a novel” in small print on the cover, the book is usually and more accurately categorized as a series of interrelated short stories. 

 

People in Glass Houses reveals Hazzard’s talent for humor, particularly impressive for being so different from the historical romance of The Great Fire, yet both share psychological and sociological insight.  People in Glass Houses is a satire of the United Nations (referred to as “the Organization”), based on the author’s decade working there.  However, its acute understanding can be applied to any bureaucratic organization, public or private, a point the author makes explicit in several places.

 

People in Glass Houses consists of wonderful character sketches told in eight stories or chapters.  It opens with a spoof of bureaucratic language:  “Mr. Bekkus frequently misused the word ‘hopefully’.  He also made a point of saying ‘locate’ instead of ‘find’, ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use’, and never lost an opportunity to indicate or communicate; and would slip in a ‘basically’ when he felt unsure of his ground.” (p. 9)

 

A major theme of the stories is how large bureaucracies stifle creativity and individuality:  “the Organization … [had] no room for personalities, and … its hope for survival lay, like that of all organizations, in the subordination of individual gifts to general procedures.” (p. 16)  In the first story, Lidia is chastised by Miss Bass for “respond[ing] emotionally, not pragmatically. … Miss Bass was one of those who find it easy and even gratifying to direct fraternal feelings towards large numbers of people living at great distances … ‘You don’t relate to them as individuals.’  In Miss Bass’s mouth the very word ‘individuals’ denoted legions.” (pp. 28-29)

 

The second story, “The Flowers of Sorrow,” begins with the Organization’s “Nordic” leader, obviously based on UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (1953-1961), departing from the prepared script of his speech to UN employees to add a poetic metaphor.  “Words like joy and, more especially, sorrow … were particularly unlooked-for on Staff Day, when the Organization was at its most impersonal.  The lifted faces—faces of a certain fatigued assiduity … dinted with the pressure of administrative detail, suggested habitual submergence … responded with a faint, corporate quiver.”  (p. 33) Much of the rest of the story is how various staff react, mainly negatively, to the poetic aberration, despite their sustained applause for the speech:  “the ovation continued a little longer without reference to the content of the speech, although some staff members were already filing out and others had begun their complaints while still applauding.” (p. 34)

 

A related theme is how the bureaucracy tends to change the character of its members for the worse.  Tong is beaming when he delivers news that another employee’s contract will be terminated.  Although he was “[n]ot naturally malicious, he had developed rapidly since entering bureaucracy.” (p. 20) Patricio Rodriguez-O’Hearn, a manager with DALTO—the Department of Aid to the Less Technically Oriented—was a man of culture who had wanted to be a concert pianist.  Yet, he will mimic the corporate jargon and craven behavior of Bekkus.

 

The obtuseness of those imposing the Organization’s idealistic aims on reluctant peoples is sardonically observed, a reminder that internationalism sometimes seems not so different from colonialism.  Concluding a presentation on the work of the Civic Coordination Programme, Edrich notes, “[t]hese aspiration may be difficult to establish in a society where there has been no evolution of attitudes or change in value orientation …” (p. 49)  

 

Achilles Pylos, new head of a department to aid “retarded nations,” sincerely wants to help those in need, but wonders about the DALTO mandates that “seemed to justify almost anything … once a country had admitted its backwardness, it could … not accept a box of pills without accepting, in principle, an atomic reactor.  Progress was a draught that must be drained to the last bitter drop.” (pp. 102-103]  Despite misgivings, he was “obliged to participate in … far-reaching decisions concerning countries of whose language … customs … religion … politics … [and] history…” he was ignorant. (p. 103)

 

Although the last two stories are less successful than the rest of the collection, both still contain patches of Hazzard’s perceptive wit.  In the penultimate chapter, the only one set abroad (in Rhodes), the taxi driver assumes the newly arrived Organization worker is affiliated with NATO.  When she explains that her group’s mission is not military but peacekeeping, he “shrugged at this subtlety.” (p. 134)

 

Having now enjoyed reading two very different books by Shirley Hazzard, she is certainly a candidate for the “favorite authors” category, and I look forward to exploring her work further.