Finks

February 1, 2017

Among the Cold War's many grim realities, some only now being revealed, is the extent of CIA influence on the publishing industry. Whitney's (cofounder, Guernica) exhaustive research and interviews uncover details belying the myth of intellectual solidarity and comfort commonly projected onto the literati. In 1982, John Train, founding managing editor of the Paris Review, offered funding from his NGO, the Afghanistan Relief Committee, for a film about that country, which amounted to "Cold War propaganda on broadcast television." Train's archives from the period document his use of a shell nonprofit with a CIA code name to send journalists on anti-Soviet intelligence missions. Novelist and Paris Review cofounder Peter Matthiessen admitted to out-of-the-loop fellow cofounder Harold "Doc" Humes that, in 1952, the magazine was created as a cover for Matthiessen's role as a spy for the CIA. Editor-in-chief George Plimpton was complicit but apparently toed the line by claiming aesthetics--not politics--guided his decisions. Plimpton's visits to idol Ernest Hemingway in Cuba are chronicled, as well as the witting and unwitting involvement of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, and others. VERDICT Will appeal to readers curious about the political agendas behind CIA manipulation of publishing in America and abroad during and after the Cold War.--William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 22, 2017
In this study on the Cold War’s cultural front, Guernica cofounder Whitney examines how the CIA influenced, manipulated, and funded innumerable magazines and journals in an ongoing affair of propaganda and subversion. Starting in 1950 under the guise of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA enlisted writers, editors, and many more to not-so-subtly sway public opinion across the globe against Communism, with publications such as the Paris Review, Encounter, Der Monat, and Preuves carrying out the mission. Whitney examines how all of these magazines and literary luminaries played their roles throughout the 1950s and 1960s. “What follows is by necessity a group biography, reconstructed from the splintered histories of the time,” Whitney writes, that “have been scattered around the world in books, archives, and websites.” Whitney concludes that while the people involved may have meant well, in turning these magazines into a weapon, they undermined and corrupted “our practice of cultural and press freedom.” The book’s subject matter is fascinating and complex, but Whitney’s writing is dry and unengaging; what might work for a lecture comes across as dispassionate, even dull, in print. Teasing apart the myriad lists of magazines and personalities grows tedious after a while, but for those willing to slog through, a rich tapestry of material awaits.