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2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

3. Cold Wars and Porous Borders

Author : David Riddle Watson

Published in: Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Examined in this chapter is the rise of instrumental rationality alongside the Cold War. Specifically, I look at the films The Third Man and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the novel One Lonely Night to examine the attempt to justify actions because of the perceived threat of the other’s evil possibilities. I show how the spies dealt with in this chapter are unable to decipher the intentions of their interlocutor, leading to what will become an ironic postmodern stance toward truth and information. Finally, I address Nicholson Baker’s recent work Baseless, in which he attempts to discover if the United States used biological weapons during the Korean War. Through his rigorous attempts to answer a straightforward question, I show the deep connection between the birth of the National Security State during the Cold War and our contemporary society.

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previous chapter Closed Worlds and Cold Detectives

next chapter The Bleak and the Dread: From Existential Angst to Postmodern Paranoia

While Keenan’s point is correct, it can quickly be asked of the United States as well. Our government also acts in secret, making deciphering truth from fiction equally difficult for an American citizen. Also notable is that we see the claim that Russians do not believe in objective truth years before this critique of truth would be placed at the feet of postmodernism. One wonders how a country could build atomic weapons, fight a war, and produce the great Russian novelists without any belief in objectivity.

Of course, I do not mean the world was simpler or better or that we should desire to go back to a sacred world; what I mean is that the belief in such a world, where the righteous were rewarded, created a background that allowed for a reasonably stable foreground. For example, a community could have an agreed-upon moral arbiter (God/The Bible) that supersedes what anyone might desire, allowing for a shared sense of morality and truth.

Greene’s use of penicillin may be based on real events. In April 1946, “A former German army private was alleged chief of the fake drug ring that included two former GIs in love with frauleins and an American doctor… who got at least $13,000 in cash from one Berlin druggist for penicillin.” Newton and Timmerman point out that “Penicillin was so coveted that it was used as an espionage tool at the start of the Cold War. In post-war Vienna a US intelligence officer, Major Peter Chambers encourages Russian soldiers to share Red Army secrets and defect in return for penicillin to treat their gonorrhea and syphilis. Contracting venereal diseases was a court martial offense in the Red Army and Chambers gave this scheme the memorable name Operation Claptrap.”

For instance, Russia is often discussed as though they were still as powerful as the former Soviet Union. We live immersed in surveillance technology. Also, discussions about Donald Trump being a Manchurian Candidate certainly suggest this thinking is still with us in the present.

Heidegger discusses truth as a process of simultaneous concealment and unconcealment through the process of disclosure. As one develops a particular orientation toward the world, things illuminate that were always present, but dormant, so to speak, while, simultaneously, other entities disappear into the background. In the case of Baker, his question causes the world to disclose itself in new and exciting ways, suggesting he will be a good detective.

The program’s primary goal was to see if a subject could be turned into an assassin through mind control. The program used morphine addiction, LSD, and other behavioral techniques to control subjects.

The statement refers to a doctor working for the CIA who told a class of recruits that “our guiding light is not the Hippocratic oath, but the “victory of freedom” (Marks vii).

This is not a criticism of Baker; rather, it is a product of Baker’s stylistic choice to write the book in a daily, personal style, as opposed to a traditionally structured academic work.

I use a longer version of this quotation in the next chapter. The reason for both is simply that one could download a single chapter of this book and the quote is needed to be stated or implied in both contexts.

Baker, Nicholson. Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act. Penguin Press, 2020.

Camus, Albert, Between Hell and Reason: Essays from the Resistance Newspaper Combat, 1944–1947: 1st (First) Edition. Wesleyan University Press, 1992.

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Douglas, Ann. “Periodizing the American Century: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Postcolonialism in the Cold War Context.” Modernism/modernity, vol. 5 no. 3, 1998, p. 71–98. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/mod.1998.0055.

“George Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’,” February 22, 1946, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of State Records (Record Group 59), Central Decimal File, 1945–1949, 861.00/2-2246; reprinted in US Department of State, ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, Volume VI, Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1969), 696–709. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178

Melley, Timothy, The Covert Sphere: Secrecy Fiction and the National Security State. Cornell University Press, 2021.

Franklin, Bruce H. Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War). New edition, University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.

Heidegger, Martin. Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, The. Harper Torchbooks, 1977.

Hersh, Seymour. The Dark Side of Camelot. Reprint, Back Bay Books, 1998.

Marks, John. The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control: The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences. Revised ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.

Orwell, George “You and the Atom Bomb,” Tribune 19 October 1945.

Seed, David. “Spy Fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction, edited by Martin Priestman, English Language, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 115–34.

Spillane, Mickey. The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2: One Lonely Night, The Big Kill, Kiss Me Deadly. Later Printing, Berkley, 2001.

“Speech Delivered by Stalin at a Meeting of Voters of the Stalin Electoral District, Moscow,” February 09, 1946, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Gospolitizdat, Moscow, 1946. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116179

Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The. Directed by Martin Ritt. Performances by Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, and Oskar Werner. Salem Films Limited, 1965.

The Third Man. Directed by Carol Reed. Performances by Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles. London Films. 1949.

Whitfield, Stephen. The Culture of the Cold War. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture Revised ed., The MIT Press, 1992.

Title: Cold Wars and Porous Borders
Author: David Riddle Watson
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Truth to Post-Truth in American Detective Fiction
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-87073-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-87074-4

Copyright Year: 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87074-4_3