The third chapter of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat is the title essay. It plays with Wallace Stevens' poem 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird', and seeks to open up the reader's mind to the many unexpected, even poetic ways you can look at this plain, humble, even despised personality, the bureaucrat.
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I wrote on day one that I wrote this book in response to finding no good books on bureaucracy. On the Burning Archive blog I shared a brief excerpt from the book that expands on why I turned to Wallace Stevens to help me.
A behind the scenes look at this chapter is that it is typical of my peculiar blend of cultural traditions and lived experience. An essay about bureaucracy, structured on an American modernist poem, and inspired by a British psychoanalyst literary essayist (Adam Phillips). That’s crazy talk! But that is who I am as a writer. The odd fit of those traditions and sensibilities made the path to write this book long, difficult and lonely to some extent. But it was in this essay when I first really put the different parts together. I do hope it shifts some of your perspectives on bureaucracy and writing too.
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If you are curious about my writing, please take a look at my collection of essays on culture, history and literature, From the Burning Archive, and consider upgrading to a paid subscription at jeffrich.substack.com.