As an aside, there was a 34% increase in federal and state wiretaps in 2010, especially in California, New York, and New Jersey. There is also a wiretapping case proceeding against Google.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:28 PM on July 2, 2011 [4 favorites]

You know, just because the FBI was spying on him doesn't mean his fear wasn't the consequence of his mental deterioration. Coincidences do happen.
posted by kafziel at 8:29 PM on July 2, 2011 [5 favorites]

ya, the cancer had nothing to do with it. Besides, Hemingway wouldn't let that old queen have the satisfaction.
posted by clavdivs at 8:34 PM on July 2, 2011 [3 favorites]

Being paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
posted by zachlipton at 8:40 PM on July 2, 2011 [14 favorites]

Does anyone else picture John Belushi (as Bluto Blutarsky) in a smart G-man suit smashing a guitar against the wall and muttering "sorry"?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:43 PM on July 2, 2011

Nobody FOIA'd his file in all these years? Weird.

Hoover set back law enforcement decades in the US. Avoided going after the Mob.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:43 PM on July 2, 2011

Hemingway's friend & biographer A. E. Hotchner believes that Hemingway had recognized the FBI's activities despite his mental deterioration.

Btw, schizophrenics are often treated by managing their antipsychotic drug dosages while attempting to train them to recognize the delusions. You might conversely exacerbate problems by denying true things a mental patient observes.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:51 PM on July 2, 2011 [9 favorites]

The book "Dangerous Dossiers" has a section on Hemingway, so ya, someone FOIA'd him. His file is roughly 122 pages and is heavily censored.
Also, Hoover seemed to a bit envious of Ernests networks he set up in in cuba.Ii have no doubt hoover tried to harrass papa, as he told Albert Rice at the Floridita in Havana 'you see those three guys over there'
posted by clavdivs at 8:56 PM on July 2, 2011

You might conversely exacerbate problems by denying true things a mental patient observes.

More than just mental patients; that's pretty much the basic element of gaslighting somebody.
posted by mstokes650 at 8:59 PM on July 2, 2011 [12 favorites]

Even had he not been under surveillance, I don't think it would have prevented poor old Hemingway from killing himself eventually -- the description of him being released "in ruins" from the Mayo Clinic following electroconvulsive therapy is heartbreaking -- but I do always appreciate one more reason to despise that fucking bastard Hoover.
posted by scody at 9:03 PM on July 2, 2011

Nobody FOIA'd his file in all these years? Weird.

hemingway's fbi file was actually released in 1983. the cause of all the attention it's getting today seems to be the nyt article linked above by jeffburdges.
posted by jjoye at 9:03 PM on July 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is it possible to put up some sort of anti-monument to Hoover? Like maybe a statute of him in a corset, fishnets, and heels, about to get hit by a bus?
posted by 1adam12 at 9:04 PM on July 2, 2011 [19 favorites]

Statue. Not a statute. That wouldn't make sense.
posted by 1adam12 at 9:05 PM on July 2, 2011

hippybear: The only thing that might satisfy me is if they dug up his corpse, dressed it in a Chanel negligee and put it on trial Cadaver Synod style. Hoover did unimaginable damage by establishing the FBI with an incompetent, corrupt and paranoid institutional culture.
posted by Grimgrin at 9:10 PM on July 2, 2011 [4 favorites]

More than just mental patients; that's pretty much the basic element of gaslighting somebody

Holy shit, that has a name? Me and my younger brother have been doing this to each other since we were really, really young.

We're both winning.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 9:17 PM on July 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

Something about the FBI file makes me inexplicably very sad. Maybe just seeing the life of someone such as Hemingway reduced to a series of memos listing facts and trivialities and names and dates; a biography of Hemingway written by people for whom language and writing were never anything but functional. No poetry, no beauty, no feeling at all.

Hemingway's life, as dissected by petty bureaucrats. I dunno, I just find something really sad about that.
posted by mstokes650 at 9:21 PM on July 2, 2011 [16 favorites]

It's actually not a game and is pretty cruel on some level. Although I'm sure you and your brother have worked out a safe psychological space in which to play these kinds of pranks.

Oh god, no we didn't. It has really, really screwed us both up. I was trying to make it seem friendlier, but most of our memories before we were 15-17 are suspect. Nothing pranky about it.

Carry on.
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 9:35 PM on July 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

Eartha Kitt and Gore Vidal where spied on pretty heavily, Kitt left the country and Vidal mocked them for being bad at faking robberies.
posted by The Whelk at 9:50 PM on July 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

There aren't any statues afaik but someone designed a Hoover shirt.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:58 PM on July 2, 2011

Hmm, the wine, yes the wine, now the wine.
posted by vrakatar at 10:05 PM on July 2, 2011

thsmchnekllsfascists: Would you mind elaborating?
posted by KGMoney at 10:09 PM on July 2, 2011

Yeah, gaslighting is an amazingly, staggeringly awful thing to do to someone. For future reference, if it comes up (you know, as it so often does) I'd rather be murdered than gaslit (just kill me quickly).

See, there's a myth that "Crazy people don't know they're crazzy", but it's very often just that - a myth. I don't doubt that Hemingway, mentally deteriorating though he may well have been, wondered sometimes if he really was crazy, if the FBI really was in all in his head, like his friends said, like his doctors said - but at that point you really confront the worst of it. Imagine that you know, with absolute, 100% certainty, that one of the following two things are true - but you have no idea which one it is:

1.) I am being spied on by the FBI. My closest friends, my family, my doctors, all don't believe me and some or all of them may be in on it and lying to me. There is literally no one else in the world I can trust other than myself and I am completely, utterly alone.
2.) I am losing my mind; I cannot trust my own perceptions of reality anymore. I am really, genuinely, possibly incurably, batshit insane. I cannot trust myself and I cannot escape my own mind.

Again: you are as certain that one or the other of these is true as you are that the sky is blue, you're just not sure whether it's 1 or 2. You *must* pick one of them. So which would you rather choose to believe? Either one you pick, there will always be this niggling doubt at the back of your mind, "what if I picked wrong?"

I'm not saying that Hemingway wouldn't maybe have killed himself anyways, but it is a short, straight road from confronting that awful choice to considering suicide.
posted by mstokes650 at 10:13 PM on July 2, 2011 [16 favorites]

My scene design prof in undergrad was quite proud of his inches-thick FBI dossier. While he certainly had his demons, paranoia wasn't one of them--he wasn't worried. ("Who gives a shit about an alcoholic artist?")

...on second thought...
posted by smirkette at 10:20 PM on July 2, 2011

"Crazy people don't know they're crazzy"

Typo? There's no typo there, you must be mistaken. Both of those instances of the word "crazy" are spelled exactly the same; it's plain as day, right there in white and blue. Are you sure you're feeling okay? Have you been seeing a lot of these, um, 'typos' around?

No, no, of course I believe that you really were sure you saw a typo there. I'm just saying...look, maybe you should go lie down or something. You've seemed really stressed lately, maybe it's just getting to you, is all?
posted by mstokes650 at 10:22 PM on July 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

Hmm, speaking of gaslighiting. There was an article a couple years ago about a little girl in the UK, her mothers friend would do random shit, starting with stealing some money and the girl would get blamed for it. It got to the point where the girl started thinking she was doing things in her sleep. I can't find the link, though.
posted by delmoi at 10:23 PM on July 2, 2011

there was no link, there was no article...hmm, that would be annoying.


Captain Cutshaw: I believe in the Devil alright. And you know why? Because the prick keeps doing commercials!

Colonel Kane: You're convinced that God is dead because there's evil in the world.

Captain Cutshaw: Correct.

Colonel Kane: Then why don't you think He's alive because of the goodness in the world?

-Ninth Configuration
posted by clavdivs at 10:29 PM on July 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

seems the mansion families midnight furniture arranging made wikipedia as an example.

I always pictured Tex or someone scrawling "Need Milk" on the fridge.
posted by clavdivs at 10:31 PM on July 2, 2011

There are many possible J. Edgar Hoover statues one might design, maybe Hoover handing a downtrodden Hemingway a shotgun for example. Yet whatever the foreground conveys, the backdrop should name the victims of or enumerate crimes of Hoover and his FBI, stuff like their campaign against MLK.

Btw, I've always loved the song Losing It by Rush, especially the Hemingway references.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:31 PM on July 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

"It is known that Hemingway and his assistant, Gustavo Dur¨¢n, have a low esteem for the work of the FBI which they consider to be methodical, unimaginative and performed by persons of comparative youth without experience in foreign countries and knowledge of international intrigue and politics. Both Hemingway and Dur¨¢n, it is also known, have personal hostility to the FBI on a personal basis, especially Hemingway, as he considers the FBI anti-Liberal, pro-Fascist and dangerous as developing into an American Gestapo." -- FBI Special Agent C.H. Carson to Assistant Director D.M. Ladd, 13 June 1943
posted by blucevalo at 10:32 PM on July 2, 2011 [17 favorites]

Sorry -- "personal basis" should be "ideological basis."
posted by blucevalo at 10:33 PM on July 2, 2011

mstokes650: That's a terrifying description. Hellooo, nightmares.
posted by KGMoney at 10:38 PM on July 2, 2011

J Edgar Hoover = American Saruman
posted by thelonius at 10:41 PM on July 2, 2011 [6 favorites]

Hemingway's alcoholism was late-stage. George Plimpton reportedly claimed that, toward the end, Hemingway's liver was so enlarged one could see it "stand out from his body like a long fat leech." With advanced alcoholism, especially in older individuals, symptoms of psychosis and dementia are not uncommon. It's entirely possible he was starting to lose his grip on reality, even if his paranoia was ultimately justified. The fact that his eyesight was also reportedly diminishing makes me wonder whether he might have been suffering from Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.
posted by dephlogisticated at 10:43 PM on July 2, 2011 [4 favorites]

wormtongue
posted by clavdivs at 10:44 PM on July 2, 2011

I'm not surprised by this.
posted by zizzle at 10:48 PM on July 2, 2011

the younger Hemingway used to boast that, when reading Faulkner, he could tell exactly where on the page the old Master had hist first drink of the day
posted by thelonius at 10:51 PM on July 2, 2011 [3 favorites]

"Hemingway, it will be recalled, joined in the attacking the bureau early in 1940, at the time of the' general smear campaign' following the arrests of certain individuals in Detroit charged with violation of federal statues in connection with thier participation in Spanish civil war activities"

Mitgangs', Dangerous Dossiers

(frikkin terrible writer but an interesting book.)
posted by clavdivs at 10:56 PM on July 2, 2011

Is it possible to put up some sort of anti-monument to Hoover? Like maybe a statute of him in a corset, fishnets, and heels, about to get hit by a bus?

I'd be ok with a statue of him on a raised pedestal.

Not out of respect of course, just so that everyone walking by would get a peek up his black dress at his privates, on display for the world to see. A fitting end to his collection of secret files on the private lives of millions of Americans.
posted by formless at 10:58 PM on July 2, 2011 [2 favorites]

in a properly run country, Hoover would have been sent into exile, in, oh, the Falkland Islands. It's hard to imagine a greater anti-democratic villain. Even NIXON was afraid of him
posted by thelonius at 11:04 PM on July 2, 2011

that would be funny, formless. The statue carved in basalt and a pedestal of concrete with an asphalt coating.

Hoovers' bedroom window had a blind, outer shutters, (not sure on that) a lead lined curtain, and a lacquered Japanese screen- or was it chinese.

that clive.

OH!
"Justice is incidental to law and order."

- J. Edgar Hoover
what a tribute, eh?
posted by clavdivs at 11:11 PM on July 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

Even NIXON was afraid of him

Not everyone, there are even people Hoover was afraid of.
posted by clavdivs at 11:15 PM on July 2, 2011

>"Justice is incidental to law and order."

Wow-- that's really on the website.
posted by darth_tedious at 11:16 PM on July 2, 2011 [7 favorites]

"Afraid? I can dodge folly without backing into fear."

Rex Stout was another who saw Hoover for what he was.
posted by clavdivs at 11:24 PM on July 2, 2011

sorta proud of the tradition of americans sticking it to Hoover while he was alive.
posted by clavdivs at 11:25 PM on July 2, 2011

1.) I am being spied on by the FBI. My closest friends, my family, my doctors, all don't believe me and some or all of them may be in on it and lying to me. There is literally no one else in the world I can trust other than myself and I am completely, utterly alone.
2.) I am losing my mind; I cannot trust my own perceptions of reality anymore. I am really, genuinely, possibly incurably, batshit insane. I cannot trust myself and I cannot escape my own mind.


Even worse would be not having to choose, knowing for certain that they're both true. "I'm losing my mind and therefore vulnerable, unable to protect myself OR trust myself or trust anyone else to protect me." Yikes. I guess one would just have to come to peace with being spied on....
posted by bleep at 11:37 PM on July 2, 2011

If he were alive today, Hoover would be so happy about the Patriot Act and everything else we've done in the name of Homeland Security the last 10 years. He would have just loved those airport nudie scanners.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:41 PM on July 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hemingway's life, as dissected by petty bureaucrats. I dunno, I just find something really sad about that.

fantastic point. As far as I can tell only on comment was made about him as a writer in the file. this is by Westbrook Pelger, a coulmn he wrote for the NewYork Journal american were he says: " It has been my stubborn opinion that ernest hemingway was actually one of the worst writers in the english language during his time" it goes on but no one remembers Pelger other then history has a wormtounge for Hoover.
posted by clavdivs at 11:58 PM on July 2, 2011

I will blame preview for that last mess.
posted by clavdivs at 11:59 PM on July 2, 2011

A novel by Dan Simmons that covers this very subject is The Crook Factory. A nice beach novel.
posted by zardoz at 12:03 AM on July 3, 2011

"that's pretty much the basic element of gaslighting somebody"

A term based on the play, and the subsequent films, including one starring Charles Boyer, with a 7.8 IMDB rating. Looks like I've got something new to watch..!
posted by markkraft at 1:51 AM on July 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Nabokov didn't like him.

Nabokov was Russian.

Someone spin a theory around this, I'm tired.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 2:02 AM on July 3, 2011

Nabokov didn't like most writers. Hem. died 50 years ago and thus a lot appearing now on the net. To get a better idea of how FOI works, you ought simply ask them for your file. In many if not most cases what you get is what they want you to see and they black out much of what they believe you ought not have. Then, you have the right to question what they black out but of course you are not sure what is missing and so you have a problem making your appeal make sense. Called Catch-22.

FBI tracked people on the Right and on the Left but mostly on the Left. Seems you were not worth much as a public figure if you did not have an FBI file. Sort of not being ever noted by Peoples Magazine.
posted by Postroad at 5:04 AM on July 3, 2011

oh, i know. i just wanted to see if anyone could make an interesting thing out of that.
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 5:15 AM on July 3, 2011

Hoover = Lord Varys
posted by jet_manifesto at 5:50 AM on July 3, 2011

Both Hemingway and Dur¨¢n, it is also known, have personal hostility to the FBI on a personal basis, especially Hemingway, as he considers the FBI anti-Liberal, pro-Fascist and dangerous as developing into an American Gestapo.

Funny, in critical circles, Papa Hemingway still gets all sorts of grief for having been too much of a small-government, competition-loving conservative at heart. These criticisms often strike me as too simplistic, but it's telling, still, that in Hoover's America even a literary figure commonly criticized from the left as being too far to the right was viewed as potentially too leftist to be counted on not to betray America.

When men like Hoover run the world, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you could be viewed as a potential traitor at any time. Because fostering a ubiquitous climate of suspicion, paranoia and fear are tactically useful for justifying the concentration of more political power.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:02 AM on July 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

To expand a little on Zardoz comment- Early on during the second war, Hemingway had set up a private spy network in Cuba. Not much came of it, but it was a little eyebrow raising, do admit.

If Hollywood has taught us anything, it is that serious professionals - like Hoover - do not like amateurs' stepping into professional territory. Didn't Hemingway realize there was a war on?

Hoover wanted to do the Spy Stuff in WWII himself and had similar turf battles with William Donovan, founder of the OSS. (There are FBI files on him as well, and the two did not get along- in part because in the early days, Donovan's men did things ot make the FBI look incompetent. Say, plant phony bombs in shipyards to "test" security preparedness. Most embarrassing.)

As with so many other good things, that war put an end to the role of the quirky amateur. Will they ever return, one wonders.
posted by IndigoJones at 8:05 AM on July 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Is it possible to put up some sort of anti-monument to Hoover? Like maybe a statute of him in a corset, fishnets, and heels, about to get hit by a bus?

The only thing that might satisfy me is if they dug up his corpse, dressed it in a Chanel negligee and put it on trial Cadaver Synod style.

Yes, because a drag queen is, as Hoover believed, something shameful and humiliating that any right-thinking person should point at and mock. Cross-dressing is possibly the only righteous thing Hoover did in his entire misbegotten life, so I'd rather commemorate his 5 gazillion actions that actually do merit scorn.
posted by FelliniBlank at 8:18 AM on July 3, 2011 [14 favorites]

J. Edgar Hoover was the Patriot Act decades before there was a Patriot Act.
posted by tommasz at 8:42 AM on July 3, 2011

Is it possible to put up some sort of anti-monument to Hoover? Like maybe a statute of him in a corset, fishnets, and heels, about to get hit by a bus?

How about Hoover on his back in stirrups giving birth to Richard Nixon while Joseph McCarthy holds his hand in encouragement....
posted by ennui.bz at 9:10 AM on July 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

We really need to break the habit of referring to FOIA actions as "requests".
posted by thescientificmethhead at 9:17 AM on July 3, 2011 [5 favorites]

FelliniBlank, thank you for saying what my migerine-addled head couldn't articulate. Let's leave the cross-dressing out of the (well-deserved) vilification. Hoover gives transvestites a bad name; Cf. Eddie Izzard's "action transvestite" bit. (Sorry, can't link it at the moment, but it's easily YouTubable.)
posted by flyingsquirrel at 9:17 AM on July 3, 2011

For sale: exploding cigar. Never used.
posted by nathancaswell at 9:17 AM on July 3, 2011 [3 favorites]

Went to the Getty Museum just yesterday. They had an exhibition of photographs from pre- and post-Revolutionary Cuba, including one of Fidel Castro taken at Hemingway's home. He was wearing the fatigues and smoking a cigar, a classic.

Oh, and Che Geuvara's beard looked like the fake beard in Team America. Awful.
posted by Xoebe at 9:45 AM on July 3, 2011

Eddie Izzard's executive transvestite bit.
posted by joannemerriam at 9:47 AM on July 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

When I was in high school in the late 80's, there was some women's group that had a kind of 'career day' event where women of various professions did some Q&A with us (teenage girls). I forget how/why I was in the group, I think maybe girls were sponsored by someone in the local branch of the organization, on the understanding that we would give our own little presentation afterwards to tell the local group what we'd learned.

Anyway, the only presenters I remember were these two female FBI agents. I think 'Mississippi Burning' had just come out, and I had been hearing about all of the historical inaccuracies of the film, and what a hateful & racist person Hoover was. So I asked the women something about Hoover's influence on the current FBI, and one of them said very matter-of-fact, "Oh, Hoover's still here." I'm not sure what I'd been expecting them to say - I knew they must have had to deal with a lot to get into the agency, being female and non-white. But that phrase, and the delivery of it, is frozen in my memory as one of the most chilling things I'd ever heard an adult say.

"Hoover's still here." shudder.
posted by oh yeah! at 9:53 AM on July 3, 2011 [5 favorites]

FelliniBlank : Laughing at someone just for cross-dressing is horrible. Laughing at someone who cross-dressed while at the head of an organization where he instituted and cultivated an absurdly macho image, and who would have not hesitated for a moment to destroy any FBI agent for doing the same thing is entirely appropriate. Context matters.
posted by Grimgrin at 10:14 AM on July 3, 2011 [4 favorites]

What's incredible about this file is that there are still passages in it redacted by blacking out, including one about the Spanish Civil was ¡ª?more than 70 years ago. Who/what is being protected there?
posted by beagle at 11:12 AM on July 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ugh, I meant migraine. Duh.

joannemerriam, thanks for the link.

Grimgrin, context always helps, sure, but I'd bet most people just would point and laugh at "the bloke in the dress" (again, thank you Mr. Izzard).

Re: Hemingway, I've dealt (albeit to a far lesser extent) with the crippling effects of paranoia. When you're in the throes of it, it's nigh on impossible to distinguish between reality and what's in your head -- which is terrifying, on top of the dread that people are spying on you. I once had to buy extra thick curtains because I was sure the neighbors were watching me. It was mortifyingly embarrassing, yet the intense need to buy them overpowered my confusion and shame. (Eventually I got help for the root of the problem -- clinical depression and cyclothymia, which is like bipolar lite -- and I've come to call that type of paranoia "the narcissism of the insecure," a phrase which my shrink loves, heh.)

Having said all that, I still cannot IMAGINE what Hemingway dealt with, considering his reasons for the paranoia were founded in reality, compounded by mental instability. The terror is incomprehensibly huge. Sadly, I can understand why he ended his life.
posted by flyingsquirrel at 11:26 AM on July 3, 2011 [2 favorites]

Huh; 'mansion families' sounds like their names should be Morticia and Gomez. markkraft has a treat ahead, and should pay particular attention to the film debut (and first Oscar nomination of) miss Angela Lansbury.
posted by cookie-k at 11:35 AM on July 3, 2011

"Sometimes paranoia is just having all the facts.": William S. Burroughs
posted by Xurando at 11:56 AM on July 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Reminds me of EH's contemporary Wilhelm Reich. Most of what we're fed about him is related to the orgone machine ... clearly iffy ... and the vindictive crackdown carried out by the FBI.

Who had he angered? Consider all the human experimentation going on across North America at the time the Reich crucifixion began. Well-connected people in the US defense industry could even hang out with Crowley. What was so damned threatening about an empty box made of metal-plated wood?

About 10 years ago I decided to find out what all that fuss was really about - so I managed to find and read one of the books Reich wrote in Germany. A brilliant mind diagnosing a malignant era is a remarkable experience. Strongly recommended.
posted by Twang at 4:55 PM on July 3, 2011 [1 favorite]

Relevant: The Martha Mitchell Effect. _{and "moist..."}
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 3:07 PM on July 4, 2011 [1 favorite]