MuckRock是一家致力于将美国历史从政府机构的锁着的文件柜中解放出来的非营利组织,它提出了《信息自由法》(Freedom of Information Act)的要求,这些作者的资料范围之广令人惊讶;这些调查就像作者自己的作品一样广泛而多样。例如,詹姆斯·鲍德温(James Baldwin)公开反对国家安全机构,以至于调查人员跟踪他的一举一动。另一方面,雷·布拉德伯里可能不知道调查局对他的工作有任何兴趣。(Bradbury之所以成为目标,是因为一名线人警告说,科幻小说是苏联削弱美国决心的阴谋。)欧内斯特·海明威一如既往地醉醺醺地称FBI为纳粹和娘娘腔。为了篇幅和清晰度,这些文件都经过了编辑,但除此之外,书中的所有内容都是直接从调查文件中提取的。一些调查持续了数年,另一些只持续了几天。有些是激动人心的故事。其他人从来没有真正去过任何地方。有些很有趣,有些则很悲惨。尽管联邦政府定期承认过去的不当行为,像这样的调查可能会继续发生。就像所有看似最好忘却的事情一样,fbi对作家的调查也应该被铭记。这是我们对自己的责任。
FBI files on writers with dangerous ideas, including Hannah Arendt, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Susan Sontag, and James Baldwin.
Writers are dangerous. They have ideas. The proclivity of writers for ideas drove the FBI to investigate many of them—to watch them, follow them, start files on them. Writers under Surveillance gathers some of these files, giving readers a surveillance-state perspective on writers including Hannah Arendt, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Susan Sontag, and Hunter S. Thompson.
Obtained with Freedom of Information Act requests by MuckRock, a nonprofit dedicated to freeing American history from the locked filing cabinets of government agencies, the files on these authors are surprisingly wide ranging; the investigations were as broad and varied as the authors' own works. James Baldwin, for example, was so openly antagonistic to the state's security apparatus that investigators followed his every move. Ray Bradbury, on the other hand, was likely unaware that the Bureau had any interest in his work. (Bradbury was a target because an informant warned that science fiction was a Soviet plot to weaken American resolve.) Ernest Hemingway, true to form, drunkenly called the FBI Nazis and sissies. The files have been edited for length and clarity, but beyond that everything in the book is pulled directly from investigatory files. Some investigations lasted for years, others just a few days. Some are thrilling narratives. Others never really go anywhere. Some are funny, others quite harrowing. Despite the federal government's periodic admission of past wrongdoing, investigations like these will probably continue to happen. Like all that seems best forgotten, the Bureau's investigation of writers should be remembered. We owe it to ourselves.
Writers
Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, Tom Clancy, W. E. B. Du Bois, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand, Susan Sontag, Terry Southern, Hunter S. Thompson, Gore Vidal
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