Literary Magazines for Socialists Funded by the CIA, Ranked
Dave Monroe
against.the.dave at gmail.com
Tue Aug 25 16:13:40 CDT 2015
Cold War Modernists:
Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy
Greg Barnhisel
European intellectuals of the 1950s dismissed American culture as
nothing more than cowboy movies and the A-bomb. In response, American
cultural diplomats tried to show that the United States had something
to offer beyond military might and commercial exploitation. Through
literary magazines, traveling art exhibits, touring musical shows,
radio programs, book translations, and conferences, they deployed the
revolutionary aesthetics of modernism to prove--particularly to the
leftists whose Cold War loyalties they hoped to secure--that American
art and literature were aesthetically rich and culturally significant.
Yet by repurposing modernism, American diplomats and cultural
authorities turned the avant-garde into the establishment. They remade
the once revolutionary movement into a content-free collection of
artistic techniques and styles suitable for middlebrow consumption.
Cold War Modernistsdocuments how the CIA, the State Department, and
private cultural diplomats transformed modernist art and literature
into pro-Western propaganda during the first decade of the Cold War.
Drawing on interviews, previously unknown archival materials, and the
stories of such figures and institutions as William Faulkner, Stephen
Spender, Irving Kristol, James Laughlin, and Voice of America,
Barnhisel reveals how the U.S. government reconfigured modernism as a
trans-Atlantic movement, a joint endeavor between American and
European artists, with profound implications for the art that followed
and for the character of American identity.
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/cold-war-modernists/9780231162302
On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 4:11 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://lopezbooks.com/item/20899/
>
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 3:52 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Those mags created much of my mind...infiltrated at the source.
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> http://www.theawl.com/2015/08/literary-magazines-for-socialists-funded-by-the-cia-ranked
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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