With one ludicrous event and wry observation after another, the stories are all the more enjoyable for their very datedness.įrom the grounds of the Organization, where there is “a statue ferociously engaged in beating swords into ploughshares,” to the names of its departments and initiatives (Forceful Implementation of Peace Treaties, Peaceful Use of Atomic Weapons, and DALTO, the Department of Aid to the Less Technically Oriented) to the officials and underlings at every level of its impenetrable hierarchy (“He was a man of what used to be known as average and now was known as above-average intelligence” ), Hazzard creates a bureaucracy every bit as dysfunctional as Kafka’s and quite a bit funnier. This wicked sendup plays out in eight linked stories with a droll cast of international characters. ![]() ![]() One of the collections, “People in Glass Houses,” is a satire based on her 10 years as a typist at the United Nations, 1951-1961, here called the Organization. ![]() Her new “Collected Stories” brings together two collections and adds eight that appeared in the New Yorker but were never collected, plus two that were never published.
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