Episode 120: 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.
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Sources and Further Reading
How Iowa Flattened Literature: Link
How the CIA Helped Shape the Creative Writing Scene in America: Linkl
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.
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