The Glass Bees by Elizabeth Mayer, Ernst Junger, Louise Bogan (2000, Paperback)

In Bruce Sterling's very helpful introduction to the 1957 novel about burgeoning simulacra technology and the afterglow of feudal values, The Glass Bees by Ernst J nger (1895-1997), he writes that "J nger outlived Imperial Germany, Weimar Germany, Nazi Germany, and even the Federal Republic, finally seeing his country become Germany all over again. The clearly tired him less than it would most mortals."

I'm not sure about tired, but the social and technological changes of the twentieth century definitely deeply affected J nger, a cavalry officer of the old school, as is the protagonist of The Glass Bees. I would characterize J nger as a fascist aristocrat who looked down on the Nazis as crude thugs, but had no concern about their victims.

The Captain Richard of the novel does not like mayhem and fighting unworthy opponents. The conception of honor in which he was socialized was rendered obsolete in the First World War, and Captain Richard was turned into a tank specialist, developing and testing improvement in mechanized warfare (though he abhorred mechanized warfare and longed for horsemen fighting horsemen instead of being mowed down by machine guns).

Exceptional an analyst of new technology as Captain Richard was, he always had trouble "going along to get along." His skepticism toward all factions "made me suspect both sides and deprived me of the advantages of partisanship. I was a skeptic, and my chief weakness was that I lacked the unscrupulousness of the party member a weakness soon recognized" in every organization Captain Richard came in contact with over the long 20th century of clashing ideologies and the development of a permanent war industry.

One of Captain Richard's schoolmate has become a wheeler-dealer and sends his impoverished former peer to be interviewed for an enforcer job with the "great Zapparoni," a very rich, very closely-guarded impresario of animatronic robots and robotic movies. Today, Zapparoni seems a mix of Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and Michael Eisner, but, when J nger was writing, a blend of Howard Hughes and Walt Disney seems a possibility of serving as models for Zapparoni. Like Willie Wonka, Zapparoni lives inside the immense grounds of his factory in a Silicon Valley-like setting in which technology is perfected.

The job is to make sure that those who leave don't become competitors. It is not a honorable job, though it would be lucrative and has put the threadbare former officer into face-to-face contract with one of the richest and most elusive men in the world.

The interview and test are unusual, as are the bee robots Captain Richard watches intently while Zapparoni is tending to other business. The dystopian science fiction plot is frequently interrupted by despairing though not dyspeptic digressions on his formative experiences and distaste for a world in which the salt has lost its savor, and artificiality is triumphing in every nook and cranny of European civilization. J nger's view of diffuse and ubiquitous power and surveillance prefigured Foucault's writings about governmentality. (J nger wrote considerably more crisply and generally more concretely, though he did sometimes wax nihilistic philosophical). J nger was also prescient about the future of the entertainment business (CGI and product tie-ins).

I prefer The Glass Bees to the other two J nger novels I have read: On Marble Cliffs and Aladdin's Problem. The construction is very unstraightforward (very digressive), but The Glass Bees seems ultimately less enigmatic and less allegorical a book. One does not expect a happy ending from a J nger book, but this one celebrates human(e) values (including love) before the inevitable annihilation of any anti-consumer-society oldsters.


2006, Stephen O. Murray