The Baffler: Classic or Dud?

Shockingly enough, I agree with Nitsuh on a key point, though perhaps not in a way he'd expect: while the Baffler's rep for snarkiness is what makes it fascinating to many, it also works against the journal's rep in what I think are pretty damaging ways. Being something like a "snarky-bitchy-skewing rag" might be all well and good for Indieshite (Buddyhead is something I've never looked at in my life), that strikes me as a much more problematic goal for a journal created by people who understandably want to build reputations as to being shrewd commentators on the American way of life and death. When Tom Frank has to shuttle between the hysterically overstated and the more reasonable, I think it's a reasonable question to ask which is the "real" Frank. Along with his refusal to entertain solutions, that's why a few lefties I know find him hard to take seriously -- they know what he's against, but wonder if he stands for anything at all other than his own rage. Maybe Frank should publish his more screedy stuff under an assumed name or something, though I suppose it's too late now.

The mainstream reception of The Conquest of Cool is another example. Initially I was dumbfounded at the near-universal misreading of it as a rant about the selling-out of the sixties rather than an argument about how the ethos of sixties-style rebellion and the ethos of the advertising industry (and by extension, contemporary capitalism) were never at odds with each other in any meaningful sense. (Ron Rosenbaum in the New York Observer actually gave Tom Frank enthusiastic kudos based on this misreading in a weird-ass essay comparing him to...Tom Petty. I shit you not.) In retrospect, I suppose people thought Frank was just going to apply what he so famously said about "alternative" to the sixties, but no, this time he was a lot more subtle and it just went over a lot of people's heads.

His writings on cultural matters, especially rock, I've found mammothly irritating even when he's really onto something, but it's true that both the Baffler and Frank have moved away from Culture Trust-scapegoating, but I suspect rather uncharitably that might be due in part to the indieland bitchslap Frank recieved for that misguided essay on Chris Holmes and Yum-Yum he did in Harper's. (Incidentally, is it my imagination or did they dispose of the record review section a while back?). I do more or less applaud Frank's stricter focus on dissecting the ways contemporary capitalism tries to explain itself to itself, though.

Tom Frank would make an excellent talk-radio host. Surely it's about time for some mass-media exposure for the guy, considering that his earlier writings prefigured such chic late-nineties ideas as bourgeois bohemianism and The New Sincerity. Plus, his lefty blowhard swagger would act as a highly entertaining counterweight to all the right-wing blowhard swagger that presents itself in spades in radioland.

It's also true that the Baffler is generally more informational than polemical, though that's precisely what I think gives its essays that rehashed-senior-thesis flavor.

I have a very masochistic relationship with oppositional magazines: I'm at home there, but they always disappoint. They always rub me the wrong way, in the wrong way.

while i do agree with the points above about it being too 'snarky' at times (i think it reins in the sneering a lot better than most publications from that time period, although TO THIS DAY i wonder what the edit board's exact problem with the band paw was) and tom frank's, uh, lacking in pop criticism (that yum-yum article in harper's a couple of years made many of my chicago friends want to throw things) i also think it reined its weaknesses in a lot better than 98% of the other publications spawned in that day.

and the overly informational angle that a lot of its articles have are crucial inasmuch as they apply a historical context to what's often trumpeted as an age like no other - perhaps my high school education was lacking but i really didn't know what the 'gilded age' was until i picked up my first issue of the baffler back in 1994. sure, the magazine's poking of balloons was relentless, but back in the days when every publication was constantly trumpeting the greatness of the economy and the long boom and dow 30,000, it seemed like a lone voice of sanity.

tom frank's essay on the privatization of social security in this month's harpers is a pretty precise attack. i was actually wondering this morning if he could succeed lewis lapham.

it's back!

http://www.thebaffler.com/

i'll be damned

Tom Frank would make an excellent talk-radio host. Surely it's about time for some mass-media exposure for the guy,

Frank is a regular on the Agony Column podcast and in the Wall Street Journal.

Glad to see it back too!

awesome.

I'm selling off a complete run of #5 through #15 if anyone is interested in buying: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260961889322&ss

http://www.thebaffler.com/articles/alternative-to-what

just reread this. how depressing. by which i mean, it is a great article, but no matter how cynical it felt at the time, it feels naive now, in that it held out some sort of place of cultural resistance at all.

i think i must have pretty much abandoned this standpoint around the time of FT first kicking off anyway. by then it was already clear that sentiment like "rock and roll is the health of the state" was a cruel joke.

been pretty impressed with them over the last year. had no idea they've been going this long.

The current incarnation is very good, though I sometimes struggle to read everything, it gets pretty bleak

yeah, i can only do an article every month or so tbr

The article about water in Arizona was really good/infuriating

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/dead-pools-webb

this story is a wild ride

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-reluctant-fundamentalist-tubiana

this guy is 32 years old, was in his early twenties when all this went down.

Great story. May have convinced me to renew my sub. I spent the Feb/Mar of 2000 visiting a peace corp volunteer in Cameroon about 15km from Chad border (visited two towns mentioned in article). Being around residents who were, by tradition Animists, caused me to really bum out about the competing Islam / Catholicism / Evangelical Protestant missionaries vying for converts. Life for most was on the knifes edge & that was an eye opener for me.

interesting, thanks for sharing.

i didn't quite parse what was going on at the end of the story, with the extortion from the family, etc.

i was liking the general thrust of the give-poor-people-cars article about mayo pete but i'm tired of reading about american politics assholes or american politics in general. it looks like that's a lot of the articles lately?

i wouldn't mind subscribing when i'm a little less tight.

cannes has always confused me so i liked pessimistic but clear-eyed overview of it that also serves as a rave of the kelly reichardt film

https://thebaffler.com/latest/palais-intrigue-wham

'm tired of reading about american politics assholes or american politics in general. it looks like that's a lot of the articles lately?

yeah I always like their intl articles a lot too—I haven't read the one you recommended upthread yet, though I also started & didn't finish the cars one lol