With the 50th Anniversary of Sputnik in the news recently, it seems odd that the literary Cold War launched by the novel Doctor Zhivago has been overlooked by the mainstream media.  Luckily, the Bid Read blog is on the case:

To his credit, Ike soon realized that he had gravely underestimated the threat to U.S. novelistic hegemony. He promptly chartered the National Aesthetics and Style Administration, a crash program designed, among other worthy goals, to close the “simile gap.” … Gradually, however, U.S. efforts began to close the distance. By executive order, Ike put campus writing programs on a war footing … John F. Kennedy won the White House in 1960, in part by accusing the Eisenhower administration of being “soft on modernism.”

Etc.  Good good stuff.   Did I mention that the Big Read blog is hosted by the National Endowment of the Arts’ Big Read Program?  That’s the Government.   This Government.  Really.