"What's the Matter With Kansas?" came out the month before this past summer's Democratic convention, which proved to be excellent timing. Frank placed op-ed columns in major newspapers, which helped generate attention and sales. He even got a boost from George Will. The conservative columnist called Frank -- what else? -- a liberal elitist out of tune with "what everyday people consider their fundamental interests."
But Will also served up a backhanded compliment.
"Imagine Michael Moore with a trained brain and an intellectual conscience," he wrote.
What Kind of Vegetable?
Frank has a trained brain, all right. He got a PhD in cultural history from the University of Chicago in 1994. But he wasn't destined to wind up an academic. The story of his one and only university job interview has his Baffler colleagues laughing to this day.
By the time he landed it, Frank had a contract from the University of Chicago Press to publish a book based on his dissertation. His interviewers seemed amazed by this, he recalls, and the main question they had for him was: How did he do it?
This annoyed him. ("I was, like, 'Well, it's a quality book, that's how.' ") So did the fact that, having flown in at his own expense, he was given to understand that he had no real chance at the job. At the end, the interviewers asked if he had questions for them.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's go around the room and each of you tell me: If you had to be a vegetable, what kind of vegetable would you be, and why?"
If he has regrets, he doesn't show them. He likes being an entrepreneurial provocateur.
Frank grew up admiring Ronald Reagan, like many of his neighbors and friends in Mission Hills, Kan., a wealthy suburb of Kansas City. He took his Republican politics with him when he headed off to the University of Kansas. One day, in the library stacks, he stumbled across a book called "The Populist Revolt." Up to that point, he'd associated the term "populism" with the kind of revolt Reagan was urging: of ordinary Americans against a too-powerful government. Now he discovered a radically different populism, in which late 19th-century Kansans, among others, saw concentrated economic power as the main force citizens needed to confront.
The contrast was a revelation. "One populism acknowledges that we live in a business universe. The other doesn't see that," Frank says. "For the new conservatives, it's all about government, and business is just invisible."
He left Kansas after his freshman year for the University of Virginia. In Charlottesville, he and some friends decided to start their own magazine. When he moved on to Chicago for grad school, the Baffler went along.
Early issues ridiculed the infinite variety of commercialized "rebellion" through which American consumers are encouraged to define themselves. Frank's 1995 essay, "Why Johnny Can't Dissent," lists a few of the available options: "Break the rules" by eating at Burger King! Be "different" by choosing Arby's! "Innovate" with Hugo Boss! "Chart your own course" using Navigator Cologne!
Not coincidentally, Frank was mining this same vein for his dissertation. The result, later published as "The Conquest of Cool," was a fresh look at consumer capitalism's response to the 1960s. Frank's research showed that, far from being threatened by the decade's countercultural spirit, smart marketers had welcomed -- and in some ways, even anticipated -- the youth rebellion. After all, if consumers could be taught to "rebel" through purchasing decisions, the sky was the limit when it came to flogging new stuff.
The next big Baffler target was the much-hyped "New Economy" of the late 1990s. "One Market Under God," the Frank book that resulted, is a caustic evaluation of the economic ideology that swept the field as the dot-com-fueled Nasdaq continued its dizzy climb.
