Joyce and the G-Men J. Edgar Hoovers Manipulation of Modernism [Hardcover]

Several years ago on a whim, Culleton requested James Joyce's FBI file. Hoover had Joyce under surveillance as a suspected Communist, and the chain of cross-references that Culleton followed from Joyce's file lead her to obscenity trials and, less obviously, to a plot to assassinate Irish labour leader James Larkin. Hoover devoted a great deal of energy to keeping watch on intellectuals and considered literature to be dangerous on a number of levels. Joyce and the G-Men explores how these linkages are indicative of the culture of the FBI under Hoover, and the resurgence of American anti-intellectualism.Introduction Joyce and the G-Men: J. Edgar Hoover's Manipulation of Modernism Modern Literature and Degenerist Anxieties 'Processed by Democracy': J. Edgar Hoover in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Hoover's Immigration Battlegrounds: Alien Radicals, Intellectuals, and Provocateurs in the Labour Movement 'Trade Papers for Revolutionaries': Modernism's Newspapers and Little Magazines Modernism, Obscenity, and Social Purity Discourse Epilogue Works Cited

J. Edgar Hoover could hardly tell a Joyce from a James or an ism from a wasm, and his most regular reading was the Racing Form. Yet Claire Culleton's important and engrossing book leaves no doubt that Hoover and his Loyalty Watchers went to extreme lengths to influence what Americans did - and didn't - read. Buy this book now, before today's little Hoovers ban it. - Fred Jerome, author of The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist

Leading us through her own struggles with the censored FBI files J. Edgar Hoover maintained on many of the leading novelists, poets, and publishers of the period, Claire Culleton uncovers a startling history of official anxiety, unofficial surveillance, and covert repression. Reading provocatively between the lines of blacked-out text in Hoover's files, this book pieces together the compelling portrait of a modernisml³$