James Baldwin was accused by Richard Wright of being a tool of the CIA. This accusation did not emerge from a vacuum; "I'm going to destroy you," Baldwin once told him to his face at a Parisian cafe. He then proceeded to do just that by writing a series of not-so-veiled character assassinations in a variety of magazines. The way Richard Wright would made his accusation was by the means he knew best: fiction. He wrote a stand-in for Baldwin in his still unpublished novel ISLAND OF HALLUCINATIONS. Richard Wright of course was probably the best-selling African American author of the first half of the 20th century with his highly influential novel NATIVE SON, which in 1940 sold 215,000 copies in its first year of publication alone. Its influence apparent on Baldwin himself, most obviously in his choice for the title of one of his most famous essays: NOTES OF A NATIVE SON. Why ISLAND OF HALLUCINATIONS remains unpublished to this very day is peculiar, but those who have had the privilege of accessing the original manuscript at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library describe it as a novel about the African American literary community in 1950s Paris, a "city of spies spying on spies spying" according to Benjamin Walker.

Despite Wright's success and influence, his name is missing from the go-to list of what is considered the American literary canon. Y'know, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Steinbeck et al. One's knee-jerk, go-to conclusion for the reason behind such an omission may be Wright's ethnicity, but such reasoning would overlook the prominence of a writer like James Baldwin who has made a rather suspect resurgence in the last ten years. Questions surrounding the reason behind's Baldwin's popularity become even more true once one looks into some of the publications that first heralded Baldwin's work. His first ever published work, the short story PREVIOUS CONDITION appeared in the October 1948 issue of Commentary magazine, which was funded by the AJC, a pro-Zionist organization in favor of the state of Israel, itself only having just been established a handful of months prior after about 17 years of violent militant activity in Palestine by armed European settlers, chief among which were the Irgun and, later, the Lehi. 

Of course, the horrors of the Holocaust committed by Germany (and its supporters) were still very fresh, and as such, very reductive reasoning in "the West" may have somehow concluded that for European Jews to colonize another land entirely outside of the bounds of Europe and establish a settler-colonial ethno-state called Israel was "the right thing to do", regardless of how many massacres of the land's inhabitants may have occurred, and regardless of the fact that this would be a continuation of Europe ethnically-cleansing itself of its own Jewish population (see Hitler's Haavara Agreement, which facilitated relocating about 60,000 German Jews to Palestine). Indeed, such thinking was pervasive, even among "leftists" and "progressives", and it remained so for decades, so much so that it wouldn't have been out of place to find pro-Israel material in American countercultural publications (such as, right in front of me, the January 1970 issue of Avant Garde magazine).

But back to Baldwin and his big break. What, one might ask, would've compelled a Zionist-leaning magazine to publish Baldwin's work? Perhaps it should also be noted that Commentary's then-editor was a member of the American Committee of Cultural Freedom, a branch of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization funded by the CIA that spanned 35 countries to counter the "spread of Communism". The CIA, at the time, was covertly involved in funding numerous magazines actually, such as Encounter, The Paris Review, The Partisan Review, and The New Leader, all of which commissioned James Baldwin's writing. This information might be rather perplexing to some, for how, one might ask, can writing that highlights racism in America possibly benefit either Zionism or the fight against communism?

To answer this, perhaps it is apt to examine the work of another African American writer who fell out of favor with the Congress for Cultural Freedom: Richard Wright, who was last published by The Partisan Review (or the New Leader for that matter) in 1935 (save for an excerpt from one of his novels several years later). Peculiar, given Richard Wright's literary prominence in the years after. So prominent was Wright that, in 1945, his writing appeared in the very first issue of Jean Paul-Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes (his name in fact listed directly under Sartre's). What Wright contributes is a critique of Sartre's play THE RESPECTABLE PROSTITUTE, which he argues is powerful in its depiction of racial tensions in the American south but falls short of fully capturing the extent of the systemic racism endemic in the nation. Harsh critic (but hey, how cool is Sartre for publishing it?), for he is talking about the very same play that would eventually get Sartre labeled anti-American. But this goes to show you the extent to which Richard Wright sought to push words and letters. This is the man that once proclaimed "all literature is protest". Much of Baldwin's work on the other hand, especially his early work, while successful in depicting the rage, pain, and sometimes despair felt by certain African American individuals--sometimes fictional, sometimes not--completely absent is how any of that might relate to society at large or even any sociocultural aspirations. Take his first published short story for instance, PREVIOUS CONDITION. It is about an African American man who, in a sense, attempts to "escape his blackness" so to speak, and fails. This man is a theater actor, and of course, due to the color of his skin, roles are very limited and he is terribly typecast. At one point he is kicked out of a white woman's house because she does not "rent to negroes", and at another point he is observed with suspicion when dining with a white female friend at an Italian restaurant. We learn that she grew up poor and ended up marrying into money. Earlier in the story, it is mentioned that the friend who had covertly put him up in the white woman's house, is Jewish and even he, while surely subject to some prejudice, can still mingle with whites without standing out, is never harassed at restaurants, and can certainly get better jobs. These two characters represent examples of those who can escape their unfortunate circumstances, while the black actor is the only one who cannot. The story ends with the actor in a jazz bar back in Harlem, chatting up a couple prostitutes. While not his scene and not where he wants to be, it is the path of least resistance, free from friction with anything other than his ego.

Basically, it's a story about staying where you "belong". Sure, it depicts the difficulties that come with being black in America, but it also kind of argues that resistance is futile. Depictions of racism aren't enough to make a work anti-racist. After all, works like BIRTH OF A NATION feature a great deal of racism.

That is not to say that Baldwin himself was not anti-racist. For one can be something, but due to unawareness, inexperience, or naivete unknowingly produce what is exactly the opposite of what they stand for. The same can certainly be said for Richard Wright's bestseller, NATIVE SON, which is rife with a number of atrocious racial stereotypes, something that seems to have been lost on Richard Wright up until his very death. That is, if his very last speech, delivered at the American Church in Paris, is anything to go by, where he seems to use NATIVE SON as evidence of his "singularly independent mind". Perhaps a better example would be his novel THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND, written around the same time but rejected by publishers until long after Wright's passing. So long in fact that it remained unpublished as intended until 2021 (around 79 years since it was first written)! In a way, one novel's popularity in 1940's America and the other's suppression is in fact the best clue as to which of them did little in the way of ruffling any sociocultural feathers. Of course, the fact that THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND was never published in Richard Wright's lifetime may be good enough reason why Wright never cited it in his talks and speeches, though an excerpt from it did appear in the spring 1942 edition of Accent.

What is perhaps James Baldwin's most famous essay, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, published in a 1955 edition of Harper's, is another problematic bit of writing that may also allude to why his work sat so comfortably with the CIA's agenda. Autobiographical, it certainly features a couple instances of racist behavior, but these instances come off as exactly that: behavioral, individual, lacking much in the way of connection to a larger social framework or history. In fact, much of the essay seems to focus on "black rage", mistrust, and poor decision-making, mostly in the figure of James Baldwin's own father. As a work of autobiography, I do not doubt the events detailed by Baldwin or his experience of them. But recounting what happens in our lives or others, no matter how grand or tragic, isn't necessarily that interesting. It is one's reading of events, the perspective one lends in their recounting of them, that makes one's retelling of things compelling. What NOTES OF A NATIVE SON amounts to, in the end, is little more than misery porn.

Richard Wright on the other hand was at this time already speaking up for Algerian independence from France. Something James Baldwin knew not to do (yet) if he desired to remain in France, given that the French would've considered this to be "sympathizing with terrorists" if not outrightly assisting them. The SDECE (French secret service) even developed what they called "the Doctrine of Revolutionary War", which sought to generate propaganda that linked decolonialism with communism. This seemed to have been a widespread strategy employed to undermine decolonial efforts around the world. Which explains why Commentary, published by an organization with pro-colonial leanings relating to a particular part of the world, may have had a vested interest in working with the Congress of Cultural Freedom and the authors it bankrolled, authors like James Baldwin. After all, upholding one place's right to decolonize must inevitably apply to all places. But if decolonization is regarded as a communist agenda, and communism is painted as the greatest evil that can possibly plague anyone or any place, then support for decolonization inevitably fizzles out. There were however major figures who were staunch anti-communists that also voiced their support for Algerian liberation. Figures like Jean Paul Sarte, whose writing also appeared in The Partisan Review. The same Sartre that at one point was accused of anti-Americanism. But here's how one of his essays in the Partisan Review starts:

"If you want to engage yourself," writes a young imbecile, "what are you waiting for? Join the Communist Party."

 Party."What a baffling presence Sartre must've been to intelligence agencies. They certainly made it a point to monitor him. As they did Richard Wright, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and even James Baldwin, once he began to change his tune from around 1960-onwards (some may like to think, btw, that such practices are entirely a thing of the past, but evidence suggests that intelligence agencies today are very much imbedded in some of our favorite social media platforms).

The more early Baldwin I read, the more I find that his work generally fits within the confines of Kenneth Tynan's 1961 critique of American theatre: "There is a tendency that American plays take as their hero some tremendously disturbed individual in a high state of hysteria, and explain it in purely internal terms, but there is no tendency or hardly any to analyze what is wrong with the individual in terms of the society outside him." This is something Baldwin more or less professed to in his 1949 essay, EVERYBODY'S PROTEST NOVEL.

Or in other words, also Tynan's: "It is not within the power of social or political change to heal the eternal sickness of the individual soul." This of course is something that would sit very well with the political class and it still rings true for the bulk of cultural production in America today, and has indeed colored much of people's thinking. Got problems? Get a self-help book, or even better: see a therapist (it's better for the economy). Never mind social, economic, cultural, or political change. Any problems you face boil down to you and you alone.

Some may point to movements such as Occupy Wallstreet, teacher strikes, or the various student protests as evidence of the contrary, but within the context of a country of over 333 million people? Such movements are reflective of a very tiny minority and hardly indicative of the culture at large. This, clearly, is something that is in dire need of changing, and something an organization like the CIA was fully aware of how to affect: Art and literature.

One thing I should point out though is that this should not be taken as a takedown of James Baldwin's work, or a blind endorsement of Richard Wright's for that matter. Not everything written by Wright is without its weaknesses, and not everything written by Baldwin is problematic. Baldwin evolved and changed, as did his writing which gradually veered from the overtly self-involved and egocentric to work that is more socially-engaged and arguably, on the whole, much better. One very fine example is his essay, ATLANTA: THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN, a reaction to a string of child murders in Atlanta, aged 7-17, all African American, case still unsolved to this very day. Published in the December 1981 edition of PLAYBOY (which also happens to be sat right in front of me), Baldwin's take is incredibly lucid and perceptive. Reading it, one cannot come out with the ignorant conclusion that "these are simply the actions of a singular psychotic madman"--as still seems to be the argument whenever anyone in America goes off the rails today (unless of course, they're Muslim)--but he gets into the city's history, its race-relations and class dynamics, its very fabric. It's an incredibly nuanced piece of writing. But one would be mistaken to make the claim that Baldwin's ego is completely absent. The essay does after all start like this:

"It's April, and I am in St.-Paul-de-Vence, France, eating breakfast and reading the American newspapers. I have been following the unprecedentedly publicized series of murders in Atlanta and now have an uneasy, unwilling feeling that soon I will almost certainly find myself in that city. For one thing, I am an honorary citizen of Atlanta, with the scroll and the key to the city, and have, I am very proud to tell you, an honorary degree from Morehouse College."

Braggadocio marred Baldwin until the very end, that's for sure.

In any case, it is a certainty that even Baldwin's later work would've never have existed at all had the first 12 years of his literary career never been heavily bankrolled by the CIA to begin with. Who knows if Baldwin would've ever managed to make it as a working writer at all? If left exclusively to "the invisible hand of market forces", I for one am led to believe that no, Baldwin would've never stood a chance. This is not a bad thing, by the way. Allowing art and literature to be governed entirely by "market forces" can only lead to generating the cultural equivalent of a McDonald's Happy Meal. The CIA's funding of so many literary publications (not to mention exhibitions and films too) is, in itself an admission by them of the necessity of cultural-production outside of market confines.

Funding and its sources aside though, it should be clear that why something becomes part of a particular art field's canon seldom has anything to do with the quality of the work itself, or at the very least involves far more other factors than the quality of the work alone.

Why has James Baldwin's work made a noticeable resurgence in the last decade in particular? Maison Baldwin, which manages the James Baldwin Estate, was only founded in 2016. This is not to suggest that the intentions behind this resurgence are in any way nefarious, but there are always reasons.

Before heralding the work of Jackson Pollock in his writing for The Partisan Review, art critic Clement Greenberg was virtually unknown. And he just so happened to have already owned a few early Pollocks he nabbed for cheap. Within a mere ten years, Pollock would have his first major museum show. Like I said; there are always reasons.

To my mind, the existence of those reasons aren't so much the problem as the non-existence of being educated about those reasons. Completely absent from the education surrounding Abstract Expressionism for example, is the involvement of the particular institutions that heralded the movement, how they did so and why. Instead, college courses, museums, and documentaries continue to propagate the genius of Jackson Pollock's art, developed in a supposed objective vacuum of sheer artistry divorced from the politics of the world he lived in. The end result is the continuation of a CIA agenda without direct CIA involvement. The baton has been passed, and now, one generation after another, artists and art-appreciators are taught that to be a real artist, the work must represent nothing, engage socially with nothing, be purely aesthetic, and stem solely from the subconscious crevices of our soul.

Similarly, Baldwin's body of work is being presented today as the epitome of anti-racist, socially-engaged writing. The work is presented as such and Baldwin is presented as such, and it is done so without contextualization, without nuance, and seldom without any genuine critique. The end result is that up-and-coming writers and thinkers are taught that "this is how it is done," and you end up with generation after generation of authors putting themselves and their very own egos at the center of everything they write, not at all the wiser that there might be something wrong with that.

Let us forget canon. Let us even forget the notion of attempting to formulate an alternative canon. Canon is bullshit. If canon must exist, let there be as many canons as there are people, chosen by us and tailored for us, not by any higher authority. Let us each have our own canons, subject to the same development and malleability as the evolution of our very personhoods. 

Tell me, what does your canon look like?


Ganzeer
Houston, TX
November 25, 2024