pileofgreybooks: a book ring

Of course, this is a question that plagues all of us--or maybe just expats who live the liberal lifestyle. This book actually turned out to be much better than expected. I'd read a pretty harsh critique in The New York Times Book Review, and although I don't always take their critiques much to heart (they keep publishing reviews by Jonathan Franzen, who I merely hate on principle since the Oprah debacle and his psycho review of Alice Munro where he didn't review the book at all, just talked about how cool she was), but I'm always suspicious of books by liberals about a place they might not really know. But, the author is an ex-Kansan, brought up in Johnson County (the richest county in the state), but on the somewhat dodgy side as far as social strata is concerned--not poor, but middle class. And, although the first couple of chapters bestow the usual liberal diatribe about how hideous conservatives are, the further you reach into the book, you find out how this state, once a state of rebels and progressives, has turned into one of the reddist states imaginable. His notes in the back of the book are meticulous--I have yet to read even a few of them. There are some points where he dives back into the diatribe, but he suddenly pulls himself out, shakes it off, and moves on. A couple of tidbits about the history I never knew came up: how the town of Ulysses literally picked up and moved away to avoid the corporation that wanted to foreclose on them; the fact that a pope has been elected right in the heartland because of the heretical nature of the late Pope John Paul II, etc. One of my main problems with the book, other than the diatribe (which, by the way, I pretty much agree with, but do we have to hear it repeated?), is the fact that, except for a few forays into Wichita and Garden City, he remains geographically in eastern Kansas. It's his stomping grounds, I suppose, but were he to head out west a few more times he may have found a few yet-liberal strongholds. I guess I'm pissed because, as a south-central Kansas expat, I know a lot of people who aren't crazy rich or crazy redneck conservatives. So, a brief, ever so brief glimmer of hope in this world according to Frank couldn't have hurt. (And, he made NO mention of Mennonites, who brought the hard winter wheat that made Kansas what it was--but nobody's perfect, I suppose.)