The CIA Battled the Kremlin With Books and Movies
This is a fascinating glimpse into the Psychological dynamics of the Cold War that highlights just how important works like Atlas Shrugged are to preserving our culture.
'According to Bennett, the CIA and other conservative organizations actually infiltrated the United States’ leading writing programs and literary journals. The goal was to establish an American literary tradition that would “venerate and fortify the particular, the individual, the situated, the embedded, the irreducible.”
That literary voice would be an alternative to the Soviet Union’s socialist realism — and its selfless heroes sacrificing themselves for good of the revolution.'
Naturally, the authors of the piece point to a number of sources in modern academe who found this "incursion into literary matters" appalling.
N.B. This item also overlaps Culture and Books.
'According to Bennett, the CIA and other conservative organizations actually infiltrated the United States’ leading writing programs and literary journals. The goal was to establish an American literary tradition that would “venerate and fortify the particular, the individual, the situated, the embedded, the irreducible.”
That literary voice would be an alternative to the Soviet Union’s socialist realism — and its selfless heroes sacrificing themselves for good of the revolution.'
Naturally, the authors of the piece point to a number of sources in modern academe who found this "incursion into literary matters" appalling.
N.B. This item also overlaps Culture and Books.