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bookwormbi's review
challenging
funny
informative
medium-paced
4.5
Everybody should read this book, but it's pretty dense if you're not up on your Cold War history AND your literary history.
arilaurel's review
4.0
More than a surface level look at the nuts and bolts of a certain type of propaganda. Finks shows how prestige is built and backed, how creative writing is linked to foreign aid, war, and imperialism, all to maintain US hegemony. Lots of revolutionary names we're all familiar with, and lots of literary names we're all familiar with, but with political connections between them that I wasn't deeply aware of. What motivated me to pick it up in the first place is my experience in the creative writing MFA workshop, and the knowledge that the CIA created the Iowa Writers Program and the creative writing MFA in order to develop and bolster American literature and the Great American Novel, so I was a little disappointed that the book didn't include info about this. But there was still plenty here, and it was thorough. Sometimes the book felt academic and was harder for me to get through (which is why it took so long), but I got something out of each chapter.
socraticgadfly's review
5.0
A great book on how the CIA was running Paris Review (in part via third-party funding) and other "culture" magazines like Encounter, most of them more directly, as a string of polo ponies to push forward the idea of American culture as a counterweight to Soviet culture (and the Soviets pointing out things such as racism).
Those on the take, as far as individuals included George Plimpton (known today by a fair number) and Peter Matthiessen (known by fewer). Whitney shows just how defensive Matthiessen was about this, claiming the CIA wasn't that bad back then, and citing his later support for American Indians as exculpation.
Beyond that, the CIA's "if you're not for us, you're against us" was applied to non-communist socialist writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. And, used to hound and spy on Papa Hemingway.
Must read, with the additional irony that Whitley has had poetry published in Paris Review!
Those on the take, as far as individuals included George Plimpton (known today by a fair number) and Peter Matthiessen (known by fewer). Whitney shows just how defensive Matthiessen was about this, claiming the CIA wasn't that bad back then, and citing his later support for American Indians as exculpation.
Beyond that, the CIA's "if you're not for us, you're against us" was applied to non-communist socialist writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. And, used to hound and spy on Papa Hemingway.
Must read, with the additional irony that Whitley has had poetry published in Paris Review!
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