Literary criticism and counterintelligence

[Mark Kohut]

One might---I might---see Pynchon as a peerless New Criticism writer, that
is THE one
who found the most and deepest ways to add "hidden meanings".....

On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 9:08 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de
> wrote:

> I find it interesting that Jesus James Angleton, chief of the CIA
> counterintelligence staff from 54 to 75 and next to Dulles probably the
> most influential member of the CIA (and a key figure of the Cold War), once
> founded a literary magazine in which he published poems by Williams, Pound
> and Cummings, amongst others, and carried on extensive correspondences with
> these poets as well as with T. S. Eliot. He also borrowed Eliot's phrase "a
> wilderness of mirrors" (from "Gerontion") to describe the
> intelligence/counterintelligence business, a usage that has meanwhile
> turned into a commonplace. Furthermore, Wikipedia says that Angleton was
> influenced by William Empson and "was trained in the New Criticism by
> Maynard Mack at Yale".
>
> (For those who are not familar with Angleton, his Wikipedia entry makes
> for a fascinating read.)
>
> On the other hand, Peter Dale Scott, who wrote some of the most important
> books on the CIA and related subjects (aka the American Deep State, the
> title of one of his books), is a poet and a retired professor of literature.
>
> It all has to do with a penchant for reading between the lines and
> searching for hidden meanings, I guess. Something that has of course always
> played an important role in Pynchon's novels and for their readers.
>
> As for New Criticism vs. reader-response theory, I tend to agree with
> Cleanth Brooks as quoted and paraphrased in Wikipedia:
>
> "'If some of the New Critics have preferred to stress the writing rather
> than the writer, so have they given less stress to the reader葉o the
> reader's response to the work. Yet no one in his right mind could forget
> the reader. He is essential for "realizing" any poem or novel... Reader
> response is certainly worth studying." However, Brooks tempers his praise
> for the reader-response theory by noting its limitations, pointing out
> that, 'to put meaning and valuation of a literary work at the mercy of any
> and every individual [reader] would reduce the study of literature to
> reader psychology and to the history of taste.'"
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism#Criticism
>
> You can go too far either way.
>
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