If you listened to the last episode of Citations Needed, you heard that the CIA funneled money into into cultural institutions like the Iowa Writers Workshop and the Paris Review to win the cultural war against communism. Much of this led to the emphasis on first-person writing and a focus on individual experience.
I don't know about you comrades, but I got Ds throughout secondary (high school) in English. I fucking hated 20th century lit. Are there any pretentious and overly individualistic writers that you blame on the CIA?
Thats fair, I'm probably being at least a bit unfair in this. I assume it also wasnt like a 100% constant pressure to do art in that style, and there definitely is really interesting art that came out of the Soviet Union in the later parts.
I shared a bunch of you want some examples