The Hungry Ghosts: Seven Allusive Comedies is a collection of short stories written by Joyce Carol Oates. It was published in 1974 by Black Sparrow Press.
Just like her collections Marriages and Infidelities (1972) and The Goddess and Other Women (1974), this one is also thematically unified as it focuses on characters from the academic and literary world. Yet contrary to Oates's previous short stories, which all treated their themes with great seriousness, the stories in The Hungry Ghosts surprise the reader as satires.
The satirical intent and implied criticism of the book is not only revealed by the epigraphs taken from Swift's The Battle of the Books - "Satire is a sort of Glass, wherein Beholders do generally discover everybody's Face but their Own" - and Fielding's Tom Jones - "Surely a man may speak truth with a smiling countenance" - but also by the title itself. On one of the front pages Oates explains: "A preta (ghost) is one who, in the ancient Buddhist cosmology, haunts the earth's surface, continually driven by hunger - that is, desire of one kind or another" (p. 6). In a letter to the editor of the New York Times Book Review she further comments:In the ancient Buddhist cosmology, according to tradition, a "preta" (ghost) is a creature driven ceaselessly by hunger - that is, desires of one kind or another. He is insatiable, no matter how much he devours. Like many people (intellectuals not excluded) he is in a constant state of anxious striving. In writing about the academic and literary world, I wanted only to illustrate from the inside, so to speak, how ambition, lust for fame and prestige, and egotism, can rule the lives of presumably intelligent people.In Marriages and Infidelities Oates explicitly alludes to novellas and short stories by earlier writers, making use of either their titles or their themes and adapting them in accordance with her artistic intentions. In The Hungry Ghosts, she plays with the titles of famous political, philosophical, and religious works: Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Booker T. Washington's Up From a Slavery, William Blake's A Descriptive Catalogue, and Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. But while the stories in Marriages and Infidelities were meant to be "testaments of her love and extreme devotion to these other writers" and their titles used without any satirical intentions, the literary allusions in The Hungry Ghosts serve entirely different purposes, as Eileen Bender points out:Unlike the authors who haunt her previous literary "marriages," these allusive influences serve only to minimize the pathetic personae: shams, drones, falsifiers, men and women whose only mode of identity is unwitting parody or desperate plagiarism, whose "art" is hackwork, whose "social conscience" is a fraudulent pose, whose criticism is reductive and pedantic. The collection is thus a punning, savage attack on the "influence" peddlers who masquerade as mentors and curators.This thesis is further supported by the fact that two of the stories - "Pilgrims' Progress" and "Up From Slavery" - were originally published as "Saul Bird Says: Relate! Communicate! Liberate!" and "The Loves of Franklin Ambrose" and later received their ironic and allusive titles.
Stories Those stories first appearing in literary journals are indicated.Lercangee, 1986 See Short Stories and Tales, pp. 7-47 "Democracy in America" (Shenandoah, Spring 1973) "Pilgrims' Progress" (Playboy, October 1970, as "Saul Bird Says: Relate! Communicate" Liberate!") "Up From Slavery" (Playboy, January 1972, as "The Loves of Franklin Ambrose") "A Descriptive Catalogue" (Carolina Quarterly, Fall 1973) "The Birth of Tragedy" (Exile, Spring 1974) "Rewards of Fame" "Angst" (Windsor Review, Fall–Winter 1974)
The Seven Allusive Comedies
"Democracy in America" The first story of the collection focuses on its protagonist's efforts to retrieve his manuscript in the dirty and chaotic apartment of the university press copy-editor who has been found dead there. Ronald Pauli explains the existential importance of the manuscript to Mrs. Novak, who opens the copy-editor's room for him:"My life seems so haphazard. Having my book accepted by the Press was the one certain thing, the only reality ... and Dr. Mercer said he was sure I'd be kept on, he was sure the Department's executive committee would be impressed with it, my having a book accepted. It means so much to me." (pp.19-20)The accidents which lead to Ronald Pauli's desperate search for his manuscript - first the theft of his valise with the carbon copy in it, then the death of the copy-editor who is in possession of the manuscript, finally the dirt and chaos of the copyeditor's apartment - add up to a satire of American society, to a nightmare vision of its unlimited possibilities. It is part of the title's irony that in a nation in which every kind of career is supposed to be possible, every kind of defeat is possible, too. Not only does Ronald Pauli's book deal with de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, but his motives for writing it reveal that he is a representative of basic American ideals as well. When he comes across pages from other manuscripts during his search, he wonders "if they belonged to other young men, like himself, who were anxious to do well ... rivals who were not in this room to compete with him, but whose invisible forms swayed and lunged around him" (p. 22). The aspect of competition as one motive for his work is also alluded to in some lines he reads on a page from another manuscript:The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all the Americans do: this gives to their passions a sort of family likeness, and soon renders the survey of them exceedingly wearisome. (p.27)The existential importance of the book is again emphasized at the end of the story when he has finally found all its pages:All these pages were his. He tried not to notice the rips and dog eared corners and the stains and smears of dust and dirt. Someone had tried to destroy him, but had not succeeded. His manuscript was crumpled, torn, stained with the dirt of a total stranger, but it had not been destroyed. And he had not been destroyed. "I'm still living," Ronald whispered. (p.29)Thus, the story on the one hand shows "how much of an academic's identity is sometimes invested in the belabored prose of these scholarly efforts." Yet Oates points out that these "scholarly efforts" are by no means based on altruistic motives alone, on thirst for knowledge and a fundamental interest in scholarly research and scientific progress, but on very common motives as well, that competition and the love of wealth and prestige are part of the academic world just as much as they are part of American society.
"Pilgrims' Progress" "Pilgrims' Progress" is the first story which is set at a fictitious little university in southern Ontario, Hilberry, which will serve as background for several other stories in The Hungry Ghosts and Crossing the Border. It focuses on the fatal development of Wanda Barnett and Erasmus Hubben, two Hilberry lecturers who become disciples of the charismatic leader figure of Saul Bird and are almost destroyed by him.
When Wanda Barnett meets Saul Bird for the first time she is at once fascinated by him. She notices that he talks "theatrically, elegantly," that his voice is "wonderfully energetic" and "wound about her like fine ribbon" (p. 33), and that "his blond hair seemed to vibrate with electricity" (p. 35). Saul Bird recognizes a character's weakness intuitively, he knows how to confuse and to manipulate him. This is demonstrated when he tells Wanda that he has been fired and immediately afterwards asks her why she looks so surprised. His eloquence and Wanda's inability to resist him are also revealed when he asks her to have dinner with him and his friends and she is unable to decline the invitation (p. 39).
While the first two parts of the story serve to introduce Wanda Barnett, Saul Bird, and his wife, the third part focuses on Erasmus Hubben and the way he is manipulated by Bird. Erasmus thinks that it is best to stay away from people, and so he keeps both his colleagues and his students at a distance. This is the main reason why his teaching is not successful, although he always prepares for his classes very carefully; but Erasmus cannot understand why the students do not appreciate his lectures. Thus, his teaching is his weak point, and Saul Bird knows how to take advantage of this.
At first only one of Bird's disciples comes to Erasmus's lectures, but merely in order to confuse him by sitting in class with his arms folded, his face taut and contemptuous, which indeed has the desired effect. Erasmus realizes that more and more of Bird's students attend his classes. They either sit there with their arms folded, demonstrating that they are obviously bored by his lectures; or one of them takes notes furiously, and Erasmus's growing confusion is disclosed when he wonders whether these notes are going to be used against him. All this has served to prepare him for Bird, who one day comes into his office and asks him to sign a petition in his behalf. Erasmus refuses to sign it, and Bird again reveals his eloquence and cleverness when he uses a simple bluff to persuade him:Hubben was extremely warm. "I'm not sure ..."
"Most of your colleagues in Philosophy are going to sign in my behalf," Saul Bird said.
"What is your decision?"
"I wasn't aware that most of them were ..."
"Of course not. People are afraid to talk openly of these matters." (p. 44)Erasmus finally even surrenders to Bird's invitation to dinner, which links his fate to Wanda Barnett's, who has been invited to the same dinner.
While the first three parts of the story have a merely expository function and serve to introduce its main characters, the other four sections deal with Wanda's and Erasmus's gradual transformation and their fatal development under the influence of Saul Bird. After the first dinner with the Birds "Wanda came as often as she could" to the meetings of "the group" at Saul Bird's apartment. She is fascinated by them and thinks that they are "so passionate ... so wise" (p. 45). Erasmus Hubben is also "transformed gradually". He comes to Saul Bird's apartment "more and more often, he stayed later, he became quite dependent upon these nightly meetings" (p. 46). Erasmus and Wanda fall a prey to the bewildering atmosphere of the group's meetings. Saul Bird practices a vulgar-psychological kind of group therapy and self-realization, and Oates discloses the clichés of their conversations and Erasmus's and Wanda's naivety when she gives an example of the "intense, intoxicating dialogue" of the group:Saul Bird: What conclusion have you come to?
Doris: That I was an infant. I was enslaved.
Saul Bird: And what now?
Doris: Now I am totally free.
Saul Bird: You're exaggerating to gain our respect.
Doris: No, I'm free. I'm free. I detest my parents and everything they stand for - I'm free of them - I am my own woman, entirely! (p.48)But Saul Bird is not at all interested in the liberation of his disciples, on the contrary he is interested in nothing but his own personal advantage. His students are attracted by the fact that he does not teach his classes formally and that they are allowed to grade themselves at the end of the year, which is the reason why he has been fired for "incompetence and 'gross misconduct'" (p. 45). When it turns out that he has negotiated with other universities while his disciples have fought for the renewal of his contract with Hilberry University, his cleverness and selfishness are totally revealed and underscored by his son's explanation that "this has happened before" (p. 59).