NOT ALL PROPAGANDA IS ART
By:
January 31, 2024
HILOBROW friend Benjamen Walker (who on occasion collaborates on audio projects with HILOBROW editor Josh Glenn) has spent the past four years researching NOT ALL PROPAGANDA IS ART, an eight-part series currently airing via Walker’s THEORY OF EVERYTHING podcast.
From the ToE website:
NOT ALL PROPAGANDA IS ART tells the story of three writers who got caught up in the Cultural Cold War between the years of 1956 and 1960: New Yorker writer and “little magazine” champion Dwight Macdonald, British theater critic and “angry young man” Kenneth Tynan, and legendary Native Son novelist Richard Wright, who at this time was living in exile in France in protest of American racism. All three collaborated with and were targeted by American, British, and French security agencies in Cold War propaganda battles over contested intellectual ideas like the critique of mass culture and politically engaged art.
The first episode of this series ran on January 23; the second episode ran yesterday. It is excellent! Highly recommended.
Here are a few HILOBROW posts about some of the folks who will show up (one presumes) in Walker’s NOT ALL PROPAGANDA IS ART series: BERTOLT BRECHT | HERBERT MARCUSE | GEORGE ORWELL | T.W. ADORNO | CYRIL CONNOLLY | JEAN-PAUL SARTRE | RAYMOND ARON | DWIGHT MACDONALD | HANNAH ARENDT | SIMONE WEIL | CLEMENT GREENBERG | ISAIAH BERLIN | MARY McCARTHY | ALBERT CAMUS | KENNETH TYNAN.
Also see: THE PARTISAN GENERATION (1904–1913) | WHENCE MIDDLEBROW? | THE BLACK IRON PRISON | ARGONAUT FOLLY pt. 3 | DEFENDING MIDDLEBROW | SHAUN CASSIDY | MIDDLEBROW DISINFO.