Dear Sorensen, Welcome to another edition of the new Baffler newsletter, set to arrive in your inbox every two weeks. Of course, if that's not enough, you can always subscribe, and look forward to a glorious full-color, full-length Baffler in your physical mailbox three times a year. | Passions of the Meritocracy CHRIS BRAY on GENERAL PETRAEUS "David Petraeus worked in an environment in which everyone was getting something for their involvement. . . .The cultural knowledge surrounding all these transactions was that the best warriors pursued women like they pursued the enemy. And yet a general somehow came to have a sexual affair with his much younger hagiographer, getting something and giving something and ending up with yet another person willing to gush about his brilliance to a credulous nation." READ MORE. | The United Sades of America HUSSEIN IBISH on the MARQUIS de SADE "Because of the centrality of his erotic novels to his legacy, later critics have often caricatured Sade as not only a pornographer, but as the arch-pornographer, representing either the worst or the best of the genre. But this is deeply misleading. Insofar as pornography is a commodity of mass-marketed and stylized representations of sexual practices, Sade is better seen as an anti-pornographer." READ MORE. | Tote Bag Nation
Here's a special offer for all of our newsletter subscribers: a chance to mark yourself a Baffler reader once and for all. Use the promo code "baffled" when you subscribe, and we'll send you a tote bag, too. That's right: for the low, low price of $40, you'll receive a tote bag in eight to ten business days and three beautiful Bafflers the rest of the year, starting with our July issue.
| Don't forget: "Fandom's like pot-smoking: a group of people sit in a room, intensely absorbed in a holy, marvelous object that displays nothing but repetition and a vaguely pleasant surface to the outsider." - Seth Sanders, "Everything That I Don't Need," The Baffler no. 3 (1992)
Past issues coming soon to a website near you. . . |
| | | Upcoming Events Monday, June 3, 7 p.m. Baffler editor in chief John Summers discusses James Agee and Walker Evans's newly discovered Cotton Tenants (soon to be published by The Baffler with Melville House Books) at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA.
Tuesday, June 4, 7 p.m. And for any New Yorkers - editor in chief John Summers will discuss Cotton Tenants the next evening at McNally Jackson Books, along with Adam Haslett and Daniel Thomas Davis.
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