Did the CIA fund creative writing in America?

[brekin]

Obviously a great example of the CIA's international offensive literary game (which I think we can all agree was needed in this instance) but also makes you wonder again about their domestic defensive game.

I doubt you will all agree with that.
It'd be stunning news to me if you all did.
"It's Unanimous: RI Approves CIA Literary Op", lol.

"RigInt-ers All Agree: CIA Literary Ops Needed Sometimes"

Like, when?

I'm sure if there was the North Korean equivalent of Dr. Zhivago or Uncle Tom's Cabin censored in NK that internationally people would be interested in reading it and the CIA would be obliging in trying to get it out. I'm not going to cry about that, I would just hope it wouldn't be doctored at all. I'd even be down with a Putinesque work of fiction or non-fiction that no one would touch in Russia, for fear of retaliation, being mid-wifed to other shores by Langley. I'm pretty tolerant of the passing game than the blocking game.

Content, rather than art, is the key to Doctor Zhivago’s importance. “Revolutionaries who take the law into their own hands are horrifying, not as criminals, but as machines that have gotten out of control, like a runaway train,” says the autobiographically rooted Zhivago to Lara at one point, and when Lara remarks, “You’ve changed, you know. You used to speak more calmly about the revolution,” he rejoins, “Those who inspired the revolution aren’t at home in anything except change and turmoil…because they haven’t any real capacities, they are ungifted.” Still later he comments:

Revolutions are made by fanatical men of action with one-track minds, men who are narrow-minded to the point of genius. They overturn the old order in a few hours or days…but for decades thereafter, for centuries, the spirit of narrowness which led to the upheaval is worshipped as holy.

Sharp fellow

Passage reminds me a lot of Eric Hoffer and his take on revolutionaries. A few quotes:

“people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.”

"The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”

“A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of action.”

[FourthBase]

Obviously a great example of the CIA's international offensive literary game (which I think we can all agree was needed in this instance) but also makes you wonder again about their domestic defensive game.

I doubt you will all agree with that.
It'd be stunning news to me if you all did.
"It's Unanimous: RI Approves CIA Literary Op", lol.

"RigInt-ers All Agree: CIA Literary Ops Needed Sometimes"

Like, when?

I'm sure if there was the North Korean equivalent of Dr. Zhivago or Uncle Tom's Cabin censored in NK that internationally people would be interested in reading it and the CIA would be obliging in trying to get it out. I'm not going to cry about that, I would just hope it wouldn't be doctored at all. I'd even be down with a Putinesque work of fiction or non-fiction that no one would touch in Russia, for fear of retaliation, being mid-wifed to other shores by Langley. I'm pretty tolerant of the passing game than the blocking game.

If the CIA funds creative writing is that the running game?

[brekin]

Obviously a great example of the CIA's international offensive literary game (which I think we can all agree was needed in this instance) but also makes you wonder again about their domestic defensive game.

I doubt you will all agree with that.
It'd be stunning news to me if you all did.
"It's Unanimous: RI Approves CIA Literary Op", lol.

"RigInt-ers All Agree: CIA Literary Ops Needed Sometimes"

Like, when?

I'm sure if there was the North Korean equivalent of Dr. Zhivago or Uncle Tom's Cabin censored in NK that internationally people would be interested in reading it and the CIA would be obliging in trying to get it out. I'm not going to cry about that, I would just hope it wouldn't be doctored at all. I'd even be down with a Putinesque work of fiction or non-fiction that no one would touch in Russia, for fear of retaliation, being mid-wifed to other shores by Langley. I'm pretty tolerant of the passing game than the blocking game.

If the CIA funds creative writing is that the running game?

If suppressing, censoring novels and writers is the blocking game and getting suppressed books abroad published is the passing game, yeah I could see funding and cherry picking key personnel, in general meddling with domestic literary instruction and production, the running game. But honestly, going back to milieu control, that heavy lifting might have been done years ago and it is now just the status quo that mostly polices itself with some key leverage points to be maintained. People still read, but I can't imagine a bestseller that isn't the same time apolitical, or the politics are so juvenilized to be fantastic.

[tapitsbo]

The thought that the institutional side of the world of literature and the humanities is overwhelmingly arranged and sustained from the bottom up still seems perverse to me. Just saying.

[tapitsbo]

“T.S. Eliot Entered My Dreams,” Allen Ginsberg (1977):

On the fantail of a boat to Europe, T.S. Eliot was reclining with several passengers in deck seats, blue cloudy sky behind, iron floor below us. “And yourself,” I said, “what do you think of the domination of poetics by the CIA? After all, wasn’t Angleton your friend? Didn’t he tell you his plans to revitalize the intellectual structure of the West against so-to-speak Stalinists?”

Eliot listened attentively—I was surprised he wasn’t distracted. “Well, there are all sorts of chaps competing for dominance, political and literary . . . your Gurus for instance, and the theosophists, and the table rappers and dialecticians and tea-leaf-readers and ideologues. I suppose I was one such, in my middle years. But I did, yes, know of Angleton’s literary conspiracies, I thought they were petty—well meant but of no importance to literature.”

“I thought they were of some importance,” I said, “since it secretly nourished the careers of too many square intellectuals, provided sustenance to thinkers in the Academy who influenced the intellectual tone of the West . . . After all, . . . the government through foundations was supporting a whole field of ‘Scholars of War’ . . . the subsidization of magazines like Encounter which held Eliotic style as a touchstone of sophistication and competence . . . failed to create an alternative free vital decentralized individualistic culture.”

(Learned of this brief piece from Talbot's Devil's Chessboard, BTW. Some interesting stuff can be found by searching for other texts which include it...)

This great quote about a failure to create "decentralized individualistic culture" is by no means from an outsider - isn't it great that Ginsberg eventually worked at Naropa University, founded by Chogyam Trungpa of TIDS notoriety?

[zangtang]

wholly uninteresting & slightly off-topic, but Gloria Steinem was on the news (uk) yesterday.........i assumed that meant she was dead, with what sounded like a eulogy before turning to her for quick interview,
at which point i naturally shifted assumptions to 'gosh she must be punting a new book'

- thing is, last picture of her before cutting to 'here in the studio' was her doing the by-now really aggravating pseudo-illuminati pyramid with the conjoined thumb & forefingers above the forehead, much beloved of self-important
bling-hop/rap crossover superstars.............I thought hmmmmn, unusual.

It may well all be about immersion, conditioning & repetition,repetition,repetion - but i'm not sure any of this audio-visual filth counts anymore ?

There'll be word out there.....i'm looking for: diminishing returns due to frazzled synapses from electronic crud overload.

[zangtang]

there we are......

https://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpre ... gloria.jpg

[backtoiam]

wholly uninteresting & slightly off-topic, but Gloria Steinem was on the news (uk) yesterday.........i assumed that meant she was dead, with what sounded like a eulogy before turning to her for quick interview,
at which point i naturally shifted assumptions to 'gosh she must be punting a new book'

- thing is, last picture of her before cutting to 'here in the studio' was her doing the by-now really aggravating pseudo-illuminati pyramid with the conjoined thumb & forefingers above the forehead, much beloved of self-important
bling-hop/rap crossover superstars.............I thought hmmmmn, unusual.

It may well all be about immersion, conditioning & repetition,repetition,repetion - but i'm not sure any of this audio-visual filth counts anymore ?

There'll be word out there.....i'm looking for: diminishing returns due to frazzled synapses from electronic crud overload.

Strutting symbolism in the most obvious public places, and giving it a reverse context for the profane to absorb, is the best way to hide the esoteric context of what the symbolism really means. The swastika symbol, for the last five thousand years, was a benign symbol of yin and yang and the traveling of the sun through the seasons and was used by the Buddhists, Hindus, and just about any other major religion you can think of. It was a unifying symbol that primitive people understood of all religions and I suspect this is why it got killed off like it did. Most people think the swastika originated with Nazi Germany but that is wayyyyy far from the truth. That symbol got "keyword hijacked" in Nazi Germany but it has been with humanity for thousands of years, and only in recent times has it disappeared into the abyss.

[FourthBase]

http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_c ... y1967.html

[PufPuf93]

Admittance into MFA creative writing programs can be quite selective.

Here is an article from the Atlantic regards well respected MFA creative writing programs.

Where Great Writers are Made

Assessing America’s top graduate writing programs

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop can be found in a quaint wooden house at the north end of the University of Iowa campus. The Workshop’s brand-new and clean-lined Glenn Schaeffer Library adjoins the house in the rear, as a fashionable offspring might flank a more elegantly dressed parent. In the library’s Frank Conroy Reading Room, which overlooks the gray waters of the Iowa River, are tall, glassed bookcases containing some 3,000 volumes published by graduates of the Workshop since it began, in 1936. Upstairs, in an unused office, are 16 large boxes of alumni books for which no shelf space is yet available. In a wire basket, on the desk of program associate Connie Brothers, are dozens of clipped reviews of recent books. “And those are only the ones I happen to have seen,” Brothers says.

more at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... de/306032/

History of Iowa Writers Workshop

https://writersworkshop.uiowa.edu/about ... op/history

History of Stanford Creative Writing Program (Ken Kesey was a graduate and while at Stanford Kesey was a participant in CIA LSD experiments)

http://creativewriting.stanford.edu/history

Iowa and Stanford are top creative writing programs and are exclusive, the number in the programs are limited to 50 at Iowa. Note Kesey was one of two Stegner Fellows for Stanford in 1959.

http://creativewriting.stanford.edu/ste ... er-fellows

Selectivity (from the Atlantic article)

"Programs such as those at Virginia, Syracuse, and UC-Irvine take as few as five or six students a year in fiction, and five or six in poetry, while Iowa takes 25 in each and Columbia takes about 35 in each. Last year, Johns Hopkins University’s two-year M.F.A. program admitted only two fiction writers out of 260 applicants. Iowa director Lan Samantha Chang says Iowa had about 1,300 applicants for its 50 total slots."

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Creative writers often have a long incubation period in their careers and effect emotions; perfect cover for covert CIA grooming of the masses.

[82_28]

Speaking for only myself, I got in to very selective colleges and and universities just on "strength" of creative writing. I graduated high school with literally a fucking something like a .08 GPA. It was sub 1.0, in other words. You should see my transcripts. It's just line after line of Fs. Point here being is that you can self teach yourself to write. From what I can tell, the CIA had absolutely no influence on my ability to write. Maybe it did, but I don't fucking know and nor do I care because because because because. Because I would have told them straight away to fuck themselves.

Edit: To add a clarification, I didn't go to any of these schools but was accepted rather. Again, not about me, just my experience.

[PufPuf93]

Speaking for only myself, I got in to very selective colleges and and universities just on "strength" of creative writing. I graduated high school with literally a fucking something like a .08 GPA. It was sub 1.0, in other words. You should see my transcripts. It's just line after line of Fs. Point here being is that you can self teach yourself to write. From what I can tell, the CIA had absolutely no influence on my ability to write. Maybe it did, but I don't fucking know and nor do I care because because because because. Because I would have told them straight away to fuck themselves.

Edit: To add a clarification, I didn't go to any of these schools but was accepted rather. Again, not about me, just my experience.

Three points here:

1) The elite creative writing programs have at most several hundred very talented participants at any one time, most have also already been through one or more hoops of fellowships and the like.

2) The CIA has a history of "soft" involvement in the arts such as with the Congress for Cultural Freedom. As revealed by the Church Committee, the CCF sponsored many foreign cultural organizations and magazines in the various arts (literary, theatre, art).

3) Individuals selected and favored by the CIA do not need to be overt hires (probably better if not for most part) but rather individuals that are projected to set favorable trends (in the flavor of liberal pro-USA western democracies.)

[FourthBase]

http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/braden_20may1967.html

The fact, of course, is that in much of Europe in the 1950's, socialists, people who called themselves "left"-the very people whom many Americans thought no better than Communists-were the only people who gave a damn about fighting Communism.

As discussed above in this thread, the CIA was mostly exerting cultural influence by supporting leftist artists and intellectuals. Just as long as they were anti-Communist kind of leftists. Which, frankly, is a reasonable criterion and direction for the government if going to decide to fund and steer culture, considering how fucking awful Communism has been. Sorry, but: Fuck non-anti-Communist leftists. Not a single taxpayer penny should ever go to one.

"From what I can tell, the CIA had absolutely no influence on my ability to write. Maybe it did, but I don't fucking know and nor do I care because because because because. Because I would have told them straight away to fuck themselves."

How about the influence the KGB et al. have had on your ability to think and write?

All in all, the CIA estimated, the Soviet Union was annually spending $250 million on its various fronts. They were worth every penny of it. Consider what they had accomplished.

[FourthBase]

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbraden.htm

Assigned the codename "Homer D. Hoskins", Braden was initially without portfolio, nominally assigned to Frank Wisner and the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), but in reality working directly for Dulles. He was given responsibility for studying Soviet propaganda. He reported: "If the other side can use ideas that are camouflaged as being local rather than Soviet supported or stimulated, then we ought to be able to use ideas camouflaged as local ideas".

You become the enemy you fight.

The policy of funding non-communist organisations got the IOD into trouble in 1952. Joseph McCarthy discovered what was happening but according to Roy Cohn, one of his aides, he considered the CIA as granting large subsidies to pro-Communist organisations". Frances Stonor Saunders has argued that "this was a critical moment: McCarthy's unofficial anti-Communism was on the verge of disrupting, perhaps sinking, the CIA's most elaborate and effective network of Non-Communist Left fronts." As Kai Bird has pointed out: "A lot of these covert operations ironically were placed at risk because of McCarthy, who threatened at one point to blow their cover because, from his perspective, this was an American agency, the CIA, going into cahoots with lefties."

Because...it was?

p.s. To remind Farewell America fans:

According to Warren Hinckle and William Turner (Deadly Secrets), in 1963 Braden advised Robert Kennedy: "Why don't you just go on a crusade to find out about the murder of your brother?". Kennedy shook his head and said it was too horrible to think about and that he decided to just accept the findings of the Warren Commission.

[JackRiddler]

3) Individuals selected and favored by the CIA do not need to be overt hires (probably better if not for most part) but rather individuals that are projected to set favorable trends (in the flavor of liberal pro-USA western democracies.)

Oh yes to that.