We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think

Spanning the 1960s to the 2000s, these nonfiction writings showcase Shirley Hazzard's extensive thinking on global politics, international relations, the history and fraught present of Western literary culture, and postwar life in Europe and Asia. They add essential clarity to the themes that dominate her award-winning fiction and expand the intellectual registers in which her writings work.

Hazzard writes about her employment at the United Nations and the institution's manifold failings. She shares her personal experience with the aftermath of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and the nature of life in late-1940s Hong Kong. She speaks to the decline of the hero as a public figure in Western literature and affirms the ongoing power of fiction to console, inspire, and direct human life, despite—or maybe because of—the world's disheartening realities. Cementing Hazzard's place as one of the twentieth century's sharpest and most versatile thinkers, this collection also encapsulates for readers the critical events defining postwar letters, thought, and politics.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Shirley Hazzard—Author, Amateur, Intellectual, by Brigitta Olubas
Part I. Through Literature Itself
We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think
The Lonely Word
Part II. The Expressive Word
A Mind Like a Blade: Review of Muriel Spark, Collected Stories I and The Public Image
Review of Jean Rhys, Quartet
The Lasting Sickness of Naples: Review of Matilde Serao, Il Ventre di Napoli
The New Novel by the New Nobel Prize Winner: Review of Patrick White, The Eye of the Storm
Ordinary People: Review of Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn and Excellent Women
Translating Proust
Introduction to Geoffrey Scott's The Portrait of Zélide
Introduction to Iris Origo's Leopardi: A Study in Solitude
William Maxwell
Part III. Public Themes
The Patron Saint of the UN is Pontius Pilate
"Gulag" and the Men of Peace
The United Nations: Where Governments Go to Church
The League of Frightened Men: Why the UN is So Useless
UNhelpful: Waldheim's Latest Debacle
A Writer's Reflections on the Nuclear Age
Part IV. The Great Occasion
Canton More Far
Papyrology at Naples
The Tuscan in Each of Us
Part V. Last Words
2003 National Book Award Acceptance
The New York Society Library Discussion, September 2012
Notes
Index