Modernism on File: Writers, Artists, and the FBI, 1920–1950

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