F.b. Eyes (ebook)

Argumento de F.b. Eyes (ebook)

"[A] bold, provocative study. . . . Maxwell's passion for the subject spills onto every page of his detailed, persuasive documentation that 'the FBI [was] an institution tightly knit (not consensually) to African-American literature.'"--Publishers Weekly (a Publishers Weekly pick of the week)

"Wickedly amusing. . . . Genius."--Alan M. Wald, Modern Philology

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2015
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Book of 2015

"F. B. Eyes is pitched at both academic and general readers. It makes an unexpected addition to studies of twentieth-century African American literature and succeeds in presenting J. Edgar Hoover as a more complex figure than James Baldwins telling description of him: as "historys most highly paid (and most utterly useless) voyeur."--Douglas Field, Times Literary Supplement

"[T]his well-researched volume illustrates the paranoia and self-censorship that altered the course of African American literature for decades as a result of the bureau's surveillance. This scholarly work will appeal to academic readers with a particular interest in African American literature or the FBI."--Library Journal

"Anyone who spies William J. Maxwell's latest book is sure to have her or his eyes pop. F.B. Eyes is a fascinating study of the FBI's decades-long surveillance program targeting the who's who of the African American cultural scene. What we read as art, Hoover's G-Men coded as threats. In poring over black writers' output across the long arc of the civil rights struggle, the FBI's 'ghostreaders,' as diabolical as they were paranoid, added layers of weight to--and in some cases informed--the African American literary canon, which Maxwell reveals in an irresistible narrative steeped in investigative research."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University

"F.B. Eyes is an exciting and important read: part detective story, part intelligence history, and part revisionist theory of black modernism. Throughout, William J. Maxwell proves to be a more rigorous and ingenious 'ghostreader' than Hoover ever was."--Mary Helen Washington, University of Maryland, College Park

"In this meticulously researched study, William J. Maxwell demonstrates how the luminaries of twentieth-century African American literature preoccupied the 'ghostreaders' of Hoover's FBI, who became some of the most assiduous critics of modern black writing. While making clear the abuses of FBI surveillance, Maxwell also illuminates the fascinating ways in which African American authors incorporated a critical awareness of spying into much of the literature they produced."--Kenneth W. Warren, University of Chicago

"Full of surprises of fact and interpretation, often wittily and memorably formulated, this awe-inspiringly well-researched book offers a completely new approach to FBI spying on black writers and to the readerly and scholarly habits of Hoovers G-Men, who perversely come across as rather pioneering critics of African American literature. This book is an absolute delight to read."--Werner Sollors, Harvard University

"This bold, well-written, and witty book makes a valuable contribution to African American and black diasporan literary history and will be an important resource for some time to come. The book reveals, among other things, a pas de deux between the FBI and black authors that had a significant impact on twentieth-century African American writing. William J. Maxwell shows that the FBIs constant surveillance had an influence on black writers and intellectuals that has largely been ignored until now."--George Hutchinson, Cornell University

"[An] immensely important story about the black authors that we thought we knew, from the 'notorious negro revolutionary' Claude McKay to the Black Arts poet Sonia Sanchez. . . . [A] welcome model for seeing state interference in culture as a two-way street."--Los Angeles Review of Books

"[T]he book's fresh perspective on the FBI's fitful tango with both its targets and its own intentions gives twenty-first-century artists potentially more daring variations, in the NSA age, on the arch replies of Wright, Ellison, Hughes, et al., to the spies. But the prospect can never neutralize the queasy, infuriating sense of so much officially sanctioned energy-squandering on generations of writers who wanted little more than to be taken more seriously than their ancestors. . . . The lurid and revealing testimony collected in F.B. Eyes calls to mind the sage counsel offered by John le Carré's fictitious traitor in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Secret services, he explains, are 'the only real measure of a nation's political health, the only real expression of the subconscious.'"--Gene Seymour, Bookforum

"[S]tartling. . . . Much of what Maxwell has discovered . . . paints a sobering picture of state-sanctioned repression and harassment over decades. It's a tribute to the strength of the panoply of FBI-targeted writers, intellectuals and leaders that they, for the most part, toughed it out and remain with us today as a fundamental part of the fabric of American history and letters."--Repps Hudson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"[Maxwell] brilliantly and chillingly examines how for 50 years Hoover and the FBI monitored the literary production of African American writers. . . . The volume reads like a detective thriller as it uncovers what Maxwell calls the ghostreading practices of the FBI."--Choice

"Professor Maxwells book and . . . website are a treasure trove for readers and researchers alike, especially those with an interest in political history and literary history."--Robin Lindley, History News Network

"[R]iveting. . . . F.B. Eyes is scintillating scholarship; for those invested in the literary and extra-literary lives of African American authors it holds all the intrigue of a pulp spy novel."--Adam Bradley, Chronicle Review

"Solid and often eye-opening."--John Woodford, Against the Current

"Maxwell does an excellent job in thoroughly exploring FBI investigations of black writers and this unique writercritic interplay. . . . F.B. Eyes does well in illuminating the interplay between bureau surveillance and literary production."--Jared Leighton, American Studies

"F.B. Eyes is a startling look at how racism has influenced the highest levels of authority."--John T. Slania, Book Page0Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
The FBI against and for African American Literature 1
The Files and the FOIA 7
Five Theses and the Way Forward 15
Part One/Thesis One: The Birth of the Bureau, Coupled with the Birth of J. Edgar Hoover, Ensured the FBI's Attention to African American Literature 25
The Bureau before Hoover 29
Hoover before the Bureau 35
Bureau of Letters: Lit.-Cop Federalism, the Hoover Raids, and the Harlem Renaissance 42
Part Two/Thesis Two: The FBI's Aggressive Filing and Long Study of African American Writers Was Tightly Bound to the Agency's Successful Evolution under Hoover 59
Flatfoot Montage: The Genre of the Counterliterary FBI File 63
The Counterliterary State and the Charismatic Bureaucracy: Trimming the First Amendment, Fencing the Harlem Renaissance 68
Persons to Racial Conditions: Literary G-Men and FBI Counterliterature from the New Deal to the Second World War 76
Afro-Loyalty and Custodial Detention: Files of World War II 85
Total Literary Awareness: Files of the Cold War 94
COINTELPRO Minstrelsy: Files of Black Power 107
Part Three/Thesis Three: The FBI Is Perhaps the Most Dedicated and Influential Forgotten Critic of African American Literature 127
Reading Like a CIA Agent 131
Reading Like an FBI Agent 141
Critics behind the Bureau Curtain: Meet Robert Adger Bowen and William C. Sullivan 150
Ask Dr. Hoover: Model Citizen Criticism and the FBI's Interpretive Oracle 165
Part Four/Thesis Four: The FBI Helped to Define the Twentieth-Century Black Atlantic, Both Blocking and Forcing Its Flows 175
The State in the Nation-State; the State of the Transnational Turn 180
The State of Black Transnationalism; the State in the Black Atlantic 186
Checking Diasporan ID: Hostile Translation and the Passport Office 195
State-Sponsored Transnationalism: The Stop Notice and the Travel Bureau 205
Jazz Ambassadors versus Literary Escapees 212
Part Five/Thesis Five: Consciousness of FBI Ghostreading Fills a Deep and Characteristic Vein of African American Literature 215
Reading Ghostreading in the Harlem Renaissance: New Negro Journalists and Claude McKay 225
Invisible G-Men En Route to the Cold War: George Schuyler, Langston Hughes, and Ralph Ellison 232
Mysteries and Antifiles of Black Paris: Richard Wright, William Gardner Smith, and Chester Himes 243
Black Arts Antifiles and the "Hoover Poem": John A. Williams, James Baldwin, Sam Greenlee, Melvin Van Peebles, Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez 259
Bureau Writing after Hoover: Dudley Randall, Ai, Audre Lorde, Danzy Senna, and Gloria Naylor 269
Appendix: FOIA Requests for FBI Files on African American Authors Active from 1919 to 1972 277
Notes 285
Works Cited 315
Index 343