Abstract

Reading Around

The article presents information related to several reading materials. The new issue of "The Baffler" proves that in Chicago, at least, the art of the polemic is not dead. One has to look back at the fights between New York intellectuals in the fifties to find the sort of verbal fire power unleashed here. This time the Bafflers are mad as hell about the way record-business executives have commodified alternative rock-packaging something that seems like oppositional music and selling it to disaffected youth. The March/April "Sierra" has six splendid and useful pieces by six splendid writers: Jane Smiley on the Great North American Prairie, John Daniel on the Pacific Coast, Andrei Codrescu on the Mississippi Basin, Page Stegner, Bill McKibben on the Adirondacks and W.S. Merwin on Hawaii.