Modernism on file : modern writers, artists, and the FBI, 1920-1950

modernism On File: Writers, Artists, And The Fbi, 1920-1950 Brings Together Important New Scholarship Focused On J. Edgar Hoover’s Fbi And Its Institutional Presence In Shaping And Directing American Print, Film, And Art Culture. From Harlem To Hollywood, Hoover And His Bureau Workers Were Bent On Decontaminating America’s Creativity And This Collection Looks At The Writers And Artists Who Were Tagged, Tracked, And In Some Cases, Trapped By The Fbi. Contributors Detail The Threatening Aspects Of Political Power And Critique The Very Historiography Of Modernism, Acknowledging That Modernism Was On Trial During Those Years. Front Matter....Pages i-vii Introduction: Silence, Acquiescence, and Dread....Pages 1-19 Front Matter....Pages 21-21 Ghostreaders and Diaspora-Writers: Four Theses on the FBI and African American Modernism....Pages 23-38 Raising Muscovite Ducks and Government Suspicions: Henry Roth and the FBI....Pages 39-52 Telling Stories from Hemingway’s FBI File: Conspiracy, Paranoia, and Masculinity....Pages 53-72 Most Wanted: Claude McKay and the “Black Specter” of African American Poetry in the 1920s....Pages 73-103 Madness, Paranoia, and Ezra Pound’s FBI File....Pages 105-125 Investigative Savagery: Figuring Hoover in Richard Wright’s Savage Holiday....Pages 127-143 “Poetess Probed as Red”: Muriel Rukeyser and the FBI....Pages 145-159 Front Matter....Pages 161-161 An Archive of the (Political) Unconscious: Jean Renoir at the FBI....Pages 163-179 New Information from the FBI, CNDI LA-BB-1: The Surveillance of Bertolt Brecht’s Telephone in Los Angeles....Pages 181-195 Sour Notes: Hanns Eisler and the FBI....Pages 197-219 Communism, Perversion, and Other Crimes Against the State: The FBI Files of Klaus and Erika Mann....Pages 221-236 Extorting Henry Holt & Co.: J. Edgar Hoover and the Publishing Industry....Pages 237-252 Back Matter....Pages 253-269 Modernism on File : Writers, Artists, and the FBI, 1920-1950 brings together important new scholarship focused on J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and its institutional presence in shaping and directing American print, film, and art culture. From Harlem to Hollywood, Hoover and his bureau workers were bent on decontaminating America's creativity and this collection looks at the writers and artists who were tagged, tracked, and in some cases, trapped by the FBI. Contributors detail the threatening aspects of political power and critique the very historiography of modernism, acknowledging that modernism was on trial during those years--Résumé de l'éditeur This collection brings together important new scholarship focused on J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and its institutional presence in shaping and directing American print, film, and art culture.