{"article":{"id":23649,"heading":"Cold war cultural production returns","author":"Michael Wize","created":"2002-12-12 03:27:30","modified":"2002-12-28 10:46:14","last_modified":"Sat, 28 Dec 2002 17:46:14","article":"
>>U.S. Writers Do Cultural Battle Around the Globe
>>
>>December 7, 2002
>>By MICHAEL Z. WISE
>>
>>
>>
>>The Bush administration has recruited prominent American
>>writers to contribute to a State Department anthology and
>>give readings around the globe in a campaign started after
>>9\/11 to use culture to further American diplomatic
>>interests.
>>
>>The participants include four Pulitzer Prize winners,
>>Michael Chabon, Robert Olen Butler, David Herbert Donald
>>and Richard Ford; the American poet laureate, Billy
>>Collins; two Arab-Americans, Naomi Shihab Nye and Elmaz
>>Abinader; and Robert Pinsky, Charles Johnson, Bharati
>>Mukherjee and Sven Birkerts. They were all asked to write
>>about what it means to be an American writer.
>>
>>Although the State Department plans to distribute the
>>60-page booklet of 15 essays free at American embassies
>>worldwide in the next few weeks, one country has already
>>banned the anthology: the United States. The Smith-Mundt
>>Act of 1948, renewed when the United States Information
>>Agency became part of the State Department three years ago,
>>bars the domestic dissemination of official American
>>information aimed at foreign audiences.
>>
>>\"There were Congressional fears of the government
>>propagandizing the American people,\" said George Clack, the
>>State Department editor who produced the anthology. The
>>essays can, however, be read on a government Web site
>>intended for foreigners
>>(usinfo.state.gov\/products\/pubs\/writers). \"We do not
>>provide that address to U.S. citizens,\" Mr. Clack said,
>>adding, \"Technology has made a law obsolete, but the law
>>lives on.\"
>>
>>Despite the domestic blackout, the participants are focused
>>on the potential abroad. \"There is the perception abroad
>>that Americans feel culturally superior and are
>>intellectually indifferent,\" said Mr. Ford, who won the
>>Pulitzer in 1996 for his novel \"Independence Day.\" \"Those
>>stereotypes need to be burst.\" He added that he was eager
>>to go to Islamic nations to help \"humanize America\" and
>>present a more diverse picture of public opinion than is
>>conveyed by the Bush administration. \"With a government
>>like the one we have, when not even 50 percent of Americans
>>voted for the president, the diversity of opinion is not
>>represented,\" he said.
>>
>>Stuart Holliday, a former White House aide to President
>>Bush who is overseeing the anthology publication as
>>coordinator of the State Department's Office of
>>International Information Programs, said: \"We're shining a
>>spotlight on those aspects of our culture that tell the
>>American story. The volume of material is there. The
>>question is how can it be augmented to give a clearer
>>picture of who we are.\"
>>
>>Before the cold war ended, the United States often sent
>>orchestras, dance troupes and other artists abroad to
>>infiltrate Communist societies culturally. Writers like
>>John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, Edward Albee and E. L. Doctorow
>>gave government-sponsored readings in Eastern Europe that
>>used literature on behalf of American interests.
>>
>>\"People lined up for blocks,\" recalled William H. Luers, a
>>former American ambassador to Czechoslovakia and later
>>president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, speaking of
>>Mr. Updike's appearance at the embassy in Prague in the
>>mid-1980's.
>>
>>But the United States Information Agency, which ran that
>>campaign, was folded into the State Department in 1999, and
>>over the last 10 years such programs have been severely
>>reduced.
>>
>>Since 9\/11, though, the State Department has increased its
>>efforts to communicate American values to overseas
>>audiences. Mr. Holliday described the anthology, for
>>example, as complementing efforts by Charlotte Beers, a
>>former Madison Avenue advertising executive who is now
>>under secretary of state for public diplomacy, to sell the
>>United States to often hostile Muslim populations.
>>
>>Her campaign includes \"Next Chapter,\" a television show
>>broadcast by the Voice of America in Iran, a worldwide
>>traveling exhibition of photographs of the ravaged World
>>Trade Center site by Joel Meyerowitz, the distribution of
>>videos spotlighting tolerance for American Muslims and a
>>pamphlet showing Muslims as part of mainstream American
>>life.
>>
>>Christopher Ross, the State Department's special
>>coordinator for public diplomacy, has advocated reviving
>>official cultural programs abroad as a \"cost-effective
>>investment to ensure U.S. national security\" and a way to
>>combat \"the skewed, negative and unrepresentative\" image of
>>America that he says most people of the world absorb
>>through mass culture and communications. Yet even some of
>>the authors expressed mixed feelings about just how
>>effective such cultural exposure would ultimately prove.
>>
>>In an interview, Billy Collins quoted Auden's famous line
>>that \"poetry makes nothing happen,\" but Mr. Collins
>>tempered that comment by adding: \"I think there are some
>>cases where it can. I don't think a group of American
>>writers is going to bring peace to the Middle East, but it
>>puts something in the media that is a counterbalance to the
>>growling and hostilities that fill the pages. It would have
>>a positive and softening influence on things.\" And while
>>Mr. Collins said he has agreed to join a tour abroad, he
>>added, \"It's not a particularly good time for unarmed
>>American poets to be wandering around Jordan and Syria.\"
>>
>>Ms. Abinader was more optimistic about the potential for
>>the literary initiative to change foreign perceptions. \"I
>>don't think I'm going to grab a terrorist by the lapels and
>>say, `There's a better way of doing things,' \" she said.
>>\"But what you can do is inspire a different kind of power.
>>That's the power of the word.\"
>>
>>Some of the anthology's authors, paid $2,499 by the
>>government, praise the freedoms they enjoy in the United
>>States, but the collection by no means presents an
>>uncritical picture of the United States. Julia Alvarez, a
>>novelist and poet who moved from the Dominican Republic
>>when she was young, writes that America is not \"free of
>>problems or inequalities or even hypocrisies.\" Robert Olen
>>Butler says that the United States, though `built on the
>>preservation of the rights of minorities, has sometimes
>>been slow to apply those rights fully.\" Michael Chabon
>>tells of crime and racial unrest in his hometown, Columbia,
>>Md.
>>
>>The poet Robert Creeley said that although the Sept. 11
>>attacks led to an outpouring of poetry to express sorrow,
>>this \"passed quickly as the country regained its
>>equilibrium, turned to the conduct of an aggressive war
>>and, one has to recognize, went back to making money.\"
>>
>>Ms. Abinader, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants to
>>Pennsylvania, recalls being subjected to racist remarks by
>>her classmates because of her dark complexion. Later in her
>>academic career, she says, \"feelings toward Arabs became
>>more negative and sometimes bordered on distrust, even from
>>my own colleagues.\"
>>
>>The other Arab-American in the volume, Naomi Shihab Nye,
>>was asked to contribute after the State Department took
>>note of an open letter she wrote \"to any would-be
>>terrorists\" the week after Sept. 11. \"I beg you, as your
>>distant Arab cousin, as your American neighbor, listen to
>>me,\" she wrote in the letter distributed on the Internet
>>and printed in several Arabic-language newspapers. \"Our
>>hearts are broken, as yours may also feel broken in some
>>ways we can't understand unless you tell us in words.
>>Killing people won't tell us. We can't read that message.
>>Find another way to live. Don't expect others to be like
>>you.\"
>>
>>Some 31,000 English-language copies of the new anthology
>>will be available abroad. Editions in Arabic, French,
>>Spanish and Russian are also being prepared. Additional
>>translations into two dozen other languages are expected,
>>with a total of about 100,000 copies likely to be
>>distributed in the next few years. Mr. Holliday said he
>>hoped that the essays would also be reprinted in foreign
>>newspapers and that students abroad would use the texts as
>>course material and to learn English.
>>
>>All but one of the articles appear for the first time in
>>the volume; the essay by Mr. Chabon is a reprint.
>>
>>Mr. Luers applauded the anthology but urged a more
>>coordinated and intensive program of cultural diplomacy.
>>\"We have to find ways to convey not just propaganda but the
>>richness of this country's culture,\" he said. \"It's
>>pathetic that we don't make an effort. Very educated people
>>abroad don't realize the depths of our culture behind
>>McDonald's and the violent movies.\"
>>
>>http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2002\/12\/07\/arts\/07WRIT.html?ex=1040382584&ei=1&en=10dd1923e4746a86<\/a>
>>\n","contact":"","link":"www.nytimes.com","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":">The Bush administration has recruited prominent American\r\n>>writers to contribute to a State Department anthology and\r\n>>give readings around the globe in a campaign started after\r\n>>9\/11 to use culture to further American diplomatic\r\n>>interests.","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2002\/12\/23649.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":24787,"heading":"usinfo? Scary","article":" Regarding that reference to usinfo.state.gov\/products\/pubs\/writers......\r\nusinfo.state.gov itself should provide hours of appalling drivel.","author":"ArborTender","parent_id":23649,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2002-12-28 10:46:14","modified":"2002-12-28 10:46:14","fileurl":""}]}