F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoovers Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature by William J. Maxwell

F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoovers Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature Reviews

• 
  Tony Lindsay

  Most Americans would like to believe that the government is there to assist in times of need, and that the FBI and other policing agencies are established to protect the general populous and to keep the citizenry safe. This is not the thought that William J. Maxwell shares in his book ‘F.B. Eyes.’
  Maxwell lays out a preconceived and well-planed attack on African American writers starting in 1919. The plan was to criminalize these writers through their art; writing that the FBI considered subversive. The work was to be cataloged and critique by Federal Bureau of Investigation readers, and with governmental support, the writers would hopefully be deported, detained or jailed.
  The plan required more than just reading the art; the writers had to be put under surveillance, interrogated, ostracized, and their character had to be assassinated to make them into to criminals. This plan was constructed and executed by J. Edgar Hoover who felt it was his duty to restore, “the redemption of the antebellum order of things ” (35). A black writer seeking equality was subversive and upsetting to the natural order of things. And a black writer who influenced other blacks to want equality was a criminal.
  Maxwell historically records that Hoover was not in the minority in this thinking. He remained a federal powerhouse from 1919 to 1972 with presidential support through most of those decades. From his spying on African American writers and cataloging their work, he was able to arrest their careers and their lives. This surveillance and manipulation of the publishing industry drove African American writers from their homeland, but few found solace abroad due to Hoover sending spies that continued monitoring the supposed threat of the writer’s lives.
  If African American writers weren’t producing enough subversive literature, Hoover had a fix for the deficit. He directed his readers to write text he thought was radical and militant, and he had it published as African American text; to do this the writers had to employ the black vernacular:
  Bureau authors could express pride in their better reproductions of black voices, lauded by FBI headquarters for feast of “imagination and enthusiasm.” Compliments seemingly borrowed from the forced cheer of creative writing professors “Read that language,” requested a San Francisco FBI agent emboldened by retirement. “Would you think that was written by a bunch of white men? When you listen to them every day for a couple of years you get to know their vocabulary” (qtd. in Maxwell 115).
  Maxwell informs that this blackface didn’t stop with text: comic books, newsletters, and newspapers have all been written by white FBI agents to help portray African Americans as seditious criminals. However, whites weren’t alone in accomplishing this task. Maxwell names several prominent African American writers, publishers, politicians, and actors who assisted Hoover in impeding black writers.
  This book serves as history and a warning to the future; the government can be friend or foe to its citizenry, and through the FOIA request made by Maxwell -history tells just how much a foe the American government has been to African American writers. ‘FB Eyes’ validates Sterling Brown’s quote, “Any black man who isn’t paranoid is crazy.”
  
• 
  Boria Sax

  In F. B. Eyes, Maxwell presents us with a history of Cold War surveillance that is far more complex, and vastly more interesting, than the standard accounts from both left and right. We learn that Hoover was widely suspected of being not only gay but also Black. He had a preoccupation with Black culture, especially Black modernism, that veered between fear, scorn, and admiration. If Hoover was a sort of "Black in Whiteface," many of his agents, who Maxwell calls "ghostreaders," were essentially "Whites in Blackface." Before the rest of the culture recognized their importance, the agents read, followed and critiqued Black writers such as Hughes, Wright, Ellison and Baldwin. They sometimes adopted the idioms of Marxists and Black militants to publish critiques of these writings in literary magazines.
  
  One thing that I find especially fascinating in the contrast Maxwell draws between the FBI and the CIA. The latter employed top students of literature from ivy league colleges and universities, who were culturally, and even politically, close to the left. These agents used the techniques of New Criticism and later Deconstruction to ferret out hidden layers of meaning in texts. These agents were imbued with strong sense of privilege, and referred to agents of the FBI contemptuously as "Fordham Bronx Irish." The FBI agents, however, were also quite literate, though mostly in an old-fashioned "great-books" sort of way, and often used their image as unsophisticated to conceal considerable cunning. The rivalry between the two agencies mirrored the conflicts in literary studies, between advocates of historical analysis and of critical theory. The patrician bias of the CIA agents prevented them from recognizing the importance of Black and ethnic authors. The FBI, however, anticipated, and inadvertently contributed to, the diversity of American literature today.
  
  What it perhaps most notable is that both the FBI and the CIA (along with foreign intelligence agencies such as MI6 and the KGB), had cultural agendas that went far beyond exposing, or even conducting, secret plots. They had cultural agendas of their own, and tried to channel the creative energies of their societies. You could almost say their investigations, some of them at least, were a sort of front.
• 
  Kel Munger

  Everyone’s a critic
  
  F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature by William J. Maxwell (Princeton University Press, $29.95)
  
  Apparently, J. Edgar Hoover and his minions were obsessed with African American writers like James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry and Richard Wright. Who knew the G-men had such excellent taste in literature?
  
  But William J. Maxwell’s F. B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature illustrates—with ample documentation—how very comprehensive FBI interest in the work of African American writers was, including close readings worthy of graduate degrees among the agents assigned. But the long game involved creating simulacra of black literature to undermine the power of the literary legacy American blacks had produced, as well as influencing and directing the reception of African American literature among white readers.
  
  What’s more, this comprehensive volume also addresses the ongoing program of harassment aimed at the black press, as well as energy exerted to prevent the publication of some works.
  
  Anyone who (still, after Tuskegee) wonders why African Americans are so skeptical of the government need only read this to understand the lengths to which some elements would go to diminish the stature of black accomplishment.
  
  This is a fascinating piece of history, dense and scholarly, but with powerful contemporary ramifications: How do we know that they’ve stopped?
  
  Reviewed on Lit/Rant:
  www.litrant.tumblr.com
• 
  Mandy

  J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI and African American writing - what an interesting combination this turned out to be. This meticulously and painstakingly researched book uncovers the link between them and exposes how the FBI policed and monitored black writing for over 5 decades, appointing “ghostreaders” to appraise the output of black American writers for sedition and in so doing these readers often became the first and sometimes most perceptive literary critics of the Harlem Renaissance. Based on the files the author obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and other original documents, he has pieced together a complex narrative of how and why the FBI became so interested in these writers and why they so feared them. Maxwell weaves into the narrative the personal lives of many of them as well as the life stories of Hoover himself and some of his staff all of which adds another layer of interest. This is an academic book and doesn’t always make for easy reading. Sometimes I found it just too detailed. But without those details such a complete picture wouldn’t emerge and I found I was willing to stay with it. It’s a wide-ranging and original exposé of this little known aspect of the FBI’s remit and one that both informs and entertains.
• 
  Cc April

  Fourteen thousand newly released FBI files have been researched by author William J. Maxwell to bring to the American public the book F.B. Eyes. Bringing to the light a dark period in our history; J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I.'s policing of African American writing for over fifty years. The F.B.I.'s ghostwriters goal was to monitor these writings and look for any signs of political unrest. Upon Maxwell conducting his research he discovers that the ghostwriters had actually become the first critics of African American writings. And furthermore, shows us that the authors actually used this to influence their writings.
• 
  Robin

  Didn't finish this one. That'll show me for trying to read a book that's basically a textbook from front to back. The book is so meticulously researched that it gets in its own way. The citations probably comprise like, 70% of the book.
  
  I guess I was looking for something a little more anecdotal and a little less dry to teach myself about this subject. But I don't doubt that this will be a valuable resource for college courses, particularly if they just use excerpts.
• 
  Michael Ritchie

  Interesting topic (how the FBI read and interpreted what it considered radical and possibly dangerous African-American literature, and even occasionally produced their own version of such) completely done in by a bizarrely elliptical academic style. I felt like I was reading the book through a thick fog. It was hard work figuring out what he was saying from paragraph to paragraph, and frankly not worth the effort.
• 
  Megan Peters

  Not going to rate this one because I didn't finish it, but this was clearly a very good dissertation that didn't go through much editing before being published which is a shame. With the right writer and a less academic form, this would be a best-seller and probably have the rights bought for a very compelling movie. I just don't want to read any more academic books right now, even though I'm super interested in what this one has to say.