Baffler

This magazine deserves a non-snarky review that gets to the point, so here goes.

I can't even recall when I first started subscribing to "The Baffler", but it was probably around the time I had finished reading Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?" (or maybe it was Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" ?) when I received a subscription card in the mail from MIT Press. Something about cultural criticism and sociopolitical insight? I'm there. And two or three times a year this thick, dense book-like magazine arrives packed with thoughtful social, artistic and economic commentary, a tiny bit of poetry, almost no advertising, and the always insightful article from Thomas Frank (who edited the Baffler up until issue #18, although he still contributes.)

The Baffler is my choice for America's Best Magazine (no, not the New Yorker), although it's also America's Best Magazine Secret. With only a few issues per year, hard to find, an enigmatic title and sedate cover art (the exception being issue #19's relaunch cover seen here) this leaves me baffled why, why why? When a new issue comes in, time stops because the topics and issues about contemporary America are weighty and require my full attention. Rather than go into detail and generalize about who writes for the Baffler and about what, I'll say that if you're a fan of Thomas Frank, The Nation magazine, Foreign Affairs, Mother Jones, Naomi Klein, Adbusters, Slate (or yes, even the New Yorker), you are in its target demographic and will find reading "The Baffler" to be time well spent. As to why it's an MIT Press imprint, who knows? But I hope they continue to support more magazines like this.

Additional information about the background and history of the magazine can be found on Wikipedia.

To recap, just so you know where all this came from/comes from:

Back in the early '90s, a certain Jamison D., who was then: 19-yrs-old (or so); that year's Rock Program Director (at the Univ. of Chicago radio station, WHPK 88.5 FM); and speaking in a sort of "shorthand" to like-minded folks on the sticker on the case of the recently-released "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" had referred to it as: "slicker Pavement, but still pretty good" (or some such verbiage). No harm, no foul . . . just a bit a talk between indie-rock geeks, but . . .

[HALT!]

In swoops the no-longer-"Station-Manager"-but-still-hanging-around-for-another-year-anyway opportunist Greg ("G.Q") Lane, who offered advice both "TO JAMISON" on the 3" X 5" sticker ["Pavement's lyrics have ALWAYS made sense; 'Shoot the Singer' is about blah-blah-blah"] and "TO EVERYONE ELSE ADVICE" [basically amounting to the same thing Jamison said, but said again, with proper, ponderous, buzz-killing "gravitas": "yeah, this is 'slick'-sounding Pavement, etc."].

(*YAWN*!)

As a freshman friend of mine once said, quoting another freshman friend of his, in re: Greg's "home base," the gosh-we-noticed-something journal, "The Baffler":

"You mean ... McDonald's is BAD? Advertising is ... BAD???" [i.e., "No WAY!" (sarc.) "Really?" (sarc.) "Tell me MORE!" (sarc., sarc., sarc.!)]

OR:

To quote Ian McEwan[*] on a similarly-overrated blowhard:

"[William] James had the knack of fixing on the surprising commonplace--and in Perowne's humble view, wrote a better-honed prose than the fussy brother who rather run around a thing a dozen different ways than call it by its name ... What's an adult to conclude or feel about Daisy Miller's predictable decline? That the world can be unkind? It's not enough."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[*] Saturday "This extraordinary book is not a political novel. It is a novel about consciousness that illuminates the sources of politics." (The Nation)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OTHER WAYS TO GET MORE THAN JUST "A CLUE":

[1.] Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making

[2.] McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (Vintage)

[3.] Pattern Recognition

[4.] Vineland (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

[5.] Bushworld

[6.] Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America

[7.] Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids

[8.] Secret Societies: Inside the Freemasons, the Yakuza, Skull and Bones, and the World's Most Notorious Secret Organizations

[9.] Everything Is Nice Matador Records

Buy Baffler Now