120: Art & Artifice Part II: The Pen and the Sword

Part 2 of 2. Throughout the Cold War, the CIA maintained a vast web of secret publications that it used to influence public thought and perceptions of the United States. Meanwhile back home, it funded successful attempts to remove politics and philosophy from American creative writing. Find out how the CIA manipulated writing and literature to its own anticommunist aims in this episode.

Twitter: Link

Patreon: Link

Shirts and more: Link

Sources and Further Reading

How Iowa Flattened Literature: Link

How the CIA Helped Shape the Creative Writing Scene in America: Link

Saunders, Frances Stonor. The cultural cold war: The CIA and the world of arts and letters. New Press, The, 2013.

The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited: Link

Pablo Neruda: the hidden story behind winning the Nobel: Link

The Paris Review: Boris Pasternak, The Art of Fiction No. 25: Link

Whitney, Joel. Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers. OR Books, 2017.

‘Workshops of Empire,’ by Eric Bennett: Link

Bennett, Eric. Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing during the Cold War. University of Iowa Press, 2015.