Title | : | The Baffler No. 19 |
Author | : | |
Rating | : | |
ISBN | : | - |
Language | : | English |
Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
Number of Pages | : | 283 |
Publication | : | First published March 1, 2012 |
Contributions for The Baffler No. 19 include Thomas Frank on the age folly, Barbara Ehrenreich on our relationship to big animals, David Graeber on how technology has failed us, Chris Lehmann on the proletarian novelist Ernest Poole, and Rick Perlstein on Ronald Reagan’s path to the presidency.
Contents:
Philosophical Intelligence Office
Decrescendo
John Summers
Salvos
Too Smart to Fail: Notes on an age of folly
Thomas Frank
I Was a Teenage Gramlich
Jim Newell
Ronald Reagan's Imaginary Bridges
Rick Perlstein
Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
David Graeber
Future Schlock: Creating the crap of tomorrow at the MIT Media Lab
Will Boisvert
Revolt of the Gadgets
Robert S. Eshelman
The Dollar Debauch
Water World
Chris Lehmann
Into the Infinite
The Animal Cure
Barbara Ehrenreich
Notes & Quotes
Smells like …
Eugenia Williamson
My Own Little Mission
Dubravka Ugrešić
Disposable Hip
G. Beato
Stories
Give Her to Me
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
2312
Kim Stanley Robinson
Edge Lands
Chris N. Brown
Lives of the Pundits
Omniscient Gentlemen of The Atlantic
Maureen Tkacik
Poems
Experts are Puzzled
Laura Riding
from Odi Barbare
Geoffrey Hill
Strike!
Charles Bernstein
Syria Renga
Marilyn Hacker
Snow Globe
Peter Gizzi
Breaking Stones
Nirala
Little Princess, or The One-Eyed Girl
Nirala
Documentia
We Told You So: An advance memorandum on the jitters
James K. Galbraith
Ancestors
Cotton Tenants: Three families
James Agee
The Baffler No. 19 Reviews
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Eshelman's piece on the overemphasis on Twitter and social networking in coverage of the Egyptian uprising vs. much of the actual work being done by labor unions was particularly thought-provoking. I barely realized the importance of a general strike and a threatened strike by the workers who keep the Suez Canal operational had been essential parts of the revolt. The take-down on the MIT media lab is funny and has some very sharp writing, same goes for the piece on high school mock-Federal Reserve competitions. There's something interesting about reading fiction in a journal that's explicitly political and the emphasis on sci-fi in this issue was interesting. It makes me think of Zizek's nugget about how China had banned any films with alternate universes as having too much potential to insight revolt. (Anybody fact-check that?)
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Worth reading, though sometimes gets too wonky/wanky. Worth reading the hilarious, vitriolic, somewhat unwarranted takedown of MIT's MediaLab.