Cultural Cold War -- Pynchon mention

[Thomas Eckhardt]

"Recent writing on CIA’s role in the kulturkampf against 
the Red Menace paints an image of debonair spooks 
recruiting the most interesting Western artists and using 
them, unbeknownst, as a liberal wedge against radical 
movements at home and abroad. The Agency created cultural 
institutions, magazines and, most importantly, a financial 
market to support movements such as Abstract 
Expressionism; it penned articles in favor of a 
liberal-leftish ideology of self-expression that could 
exist only in the ‘democratic’ West; it organized 
exhibits, printed books, organized press conferences and 
it paid grants. Episodes from the operations resemble the 
work of a paranoid comic programmer with sinister 
preoccupations. It is as if Thomas Pynchon, MK GRVTI 49, 
was behind the whole thing, perhaps working both sides 
against the middle, like one of his characters."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/15/assassins-of-the-image-the-cia-as-cultural-gatekeeper/

On the topic of the Cultural Cold War see also:

Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the 
Cultural Cold War.

With a focus on literature (Paris Review, Matthiessen, 
Plimpton etc.):

Joel Whitney, Finks. How the CIA Tricked the World's Best 
Writers.

Here is an interview with Whitney:

https://www.thenation.com/article/cia-tricked-worlds-best-writers/
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l