In Ikea’s futuristic Marxist Utopia, there will be only one huge store to accommodate the needs of an entire metropolitan area with millions of people. No choice or differentiation for the rich, the poor or the ever-rising bourgeoisie. No vagaries of styles and fashion to divide us by social class, demographic or “psychographic.” Everyone will come to the same store and fill their homes with the same stuff. Something for EVERYONE!

At first I’m captivated by the liberal idealism of the place. The hordes thronging toward the massive structure constitute an extraordinarily representative cross section of humanity. Every race, ethnicity and socioeconomic niche is here, clamoring for the basic human right to home furnishings that are inexpensive yet attractive. Our consumerism is uniting us, not dividing us! It’s a millennialist vision of universal harmony and peace!

My gush of egalitarian enthusiasm diminishes quickly once we make our way into the store. It’s easier to love the masses when they aren’t crowding against you from every direction as you try to move forward through the aisles. As we find our way across the vast space, walking, it seems, for miles, the product offerings appear numbingly homogeneous. To be sure, it’s nearly impossible not to like the Ikea style, a streamlined, utilitarian look that appeals to the least common denominator of personal taste. There’s nothing in an Ikea design that you can reasonably complain about, which makes it a no-brainer for couples with slightly mismatched sensibilities who would otherwise argue for weeks over what living room set or dining table to purchase.

Ikea is the ultimate safe choice. Everyone buys his or her furniture here, so no one will ever criticize your taste. The Ikea stuff is all very nice; the problem is, it’s all very much the same. It banishes the conceit of expressive individuality. After an hour of staring at the stuff, I yearn for furniture with an unusual stylistic approach, an ornamental quirk or unconventional look. I was hungry for a little bit of … American capitalism!

In the good old market economy, we’d be in a quiet, spacious store with eager salespeople to attend to us in the best sycophantic style. At Ikea we’re elbowing the hoi polloi throughout the huge showroom. There appear to be no salespeople; that demeaningly servile position — a relic from the era of class exploitation — has been eliminated.

Since socialism is an international movement, Ikea has done away with locally tailored marketing. The product lines have gobbledygook-sounding Swedish names that mean nothing to an American: Stromstad, Bakamo, Laholm, Paong, Enneryda, Jussi, Renfors, Hakko, Hovik and Bankeryd. The cafe sells Swedish meatballs, not hamburgers. Maybe the marketing concept is to make you feel like a Swede. In that case, I want state-funded free healthcare when I leave the place.

When we decide on the bookcases we want (only $90 each) there is no one to take our order. There isn’t supposed to be. Instead, we must weave and push our way through the other half of the Bay Area’s population, through the remaining minimarathon stretch of showroom aisles and into the warehouse itself. There are no stockroom workers, either. In the socialist Utopia, all citizens — however lame or feeble — lug their own. When we find the box containing the desired bookcases, we struggle to manipulate the heavy 80-inch-long package onto a dolly. I bruise my shins and swear out loud.

My girlfriend’s toes are nearly crushed as the unwieldy box falls off the undersize wheeler. I try to take solace by thinking of the nobility of labor in the Marxist conception, but somehow it doesn’t appease my resentment.

When we wheel the bookcases out of the warehouse, we see the checkout lines. No sight could be more daunting. The lines for bread in Moscow in the ’70s must have been shorter and moved faster. There’s nothing to do but stand and stare at the other bobos lined up behind us, who seem bewildered by having to idle on line anywhere other than Whole Foods. For Parmigiano-Reggiano and organic black mission figs at the height of the season, they’d wait five minutes. But an hour in line for bookcases? I try (unjustly) to blame my girlfriend for ruining our entire Saturday. I vow to be a dutiful capitalist in the future and pay extra for service, convenience and diverse stylistic choices and for other people to do the manual labor.

The irony is that we can’t figure out how to fit the boxes into my Honda Civic, so we have to pay an extra $100 for delivery, which wipes out much of the money we were supposedly saving by going to Ikea.

The final insult is that the bookcases are sold unassembled. When they arrive on Wednesday, my girlfriend has to call over two other friends to help her put them together. It takes a long time and requires her to offer them two bottles of wine. Fortunately, I’m out for the evening — in orchestra seats at the opera, reestablishing my credentials with the unapologetic capitalist elite.

Later, though, I test my theory about the socialist philosophy of Ikea. I check out the company’s Web site and discover a suitably Marxist rhetoric of the masses and classes: “Most of the time, beautifully designed home furnishings are created for a small part of the population — the few who can afford them,” it says. “From the beginning, Ikea has taken a different path. We have decided to side with the many.” Furniture buyers of the world, unite!

I keep wondering how Ikea is able to sell things so cheaply, even after the savings from doing away with salespeople and warehouse workers and furniture assemblers. So I tap into an international news database and search on “Ikea and sweatshops.” It turns out that labor activists have charged Ikea with selling rugs made by child slaves in India and Pakistan. Furthermore, London’s Daily Telegraph has reported that French labor inspectors investigated the company for working its people too many hours per week.

Aha! Ikea was acting just like an evil U.S. capitalist multinational. Call George Orwell! The animals on the farm are starting to look a bit like the humans they’ve overthrown. At last, I feel a measure of comfort that my animus toward Ikea might even be politically correct. But I have to confess: It’s so nice having the bookcases that I’m thinking of going back to buy two more.

Old Navy and other cheap but tasteful retailers provide perfect fodder for Frank’s critique. Their low prices and hip-but-wholesome branding strategy are supposed to present a healthy alternative to the conspicuous consumption of a Calvin Klein. But critics like Frank and Naomi Klein, author of “No Logo,” argue that the formula is really nothing more than the wolf of materialism wrapped in cheaper sheep’s clothing.

Consumers are being scammed, says Klein, arguing that stores like Old Navy and Ikea are duping millions, inspiring mass conformity while pretending to deliver high culture to the masses. “It’s this whole idea of creating a carnival for the most homogeneous fashions and furniture,” says Klein. “It’s mass cloning that’s being masked in a carnival of diversity. You don’t notice that you’re conforming because everything is so colorful.”

Klein and Frank say that few consumers recognize just how conformist their consumption habits have become. And certainly, it’s hard to argue that Ikea’s and Old Navy’s items haven’t become icons of urbanite and suburbanite imagination. Watch MTV, or rent “Fight Club,” to see Ikea’s candy-colored décor, then truck down to your local Old Navy flagship store. When you arrive, what you’ll find is that hordes of people have beaten you there. At virtually every opening of Old Navy’s and Ikea’s stores — in the New York, Chicago and San Francisco areas, for example — tens of thousands of people appeared in the first few days. Even now, long after the stores first opened, lines remain long.

What’s wrong with these people? Nothing, say defenders of the companies. The popularity of brands like Ikea and Old Navy, they argue, derives from the retailers’ ability to offer good stuff cheap. “They provide remarkable value,” says Joel Reichart, a professor at the Fordham School of Business who has written case studies on Ikea. “They’re truly satisfying people’s needs.”

Despite his irritation with the way companies like Old Navy market themselves, Frank acknowledges that businesses have always sought to offer cheap, relatively high-quality merchandise and concedes that there is some value in their attempts. He even admits that consumerism is good for the economy.

But he and other critics argue that in the end we’re only being conned into thinking that our needs are being satisfied. What’s really happening, they argue, is that clever marketers are turning us into automatons who equate being cool with buying cheap stuff that everyone else has. Under the stores’ guise of delivering good taste to the general public, any chance we have at experiencing or creating authenticity is being undermined. Ultimately, our brave new shopping world is one in which we are spending more time in the checkout line than reading books, watching movies or otherwise challenging ourselves with real culture.

“Shopping is a way of putting together your identity,” laments “Nobrow” author John Seabrook. And the “homogenized taste” of today’s Old Navy and Ikea shoppers proves, he says, that Americans either are consciously choosing to look and live alike or are determined not to notice that that is what they’re doing.

Consider the numbers. Old Navy now has 580 stores nationwide and is still expanding. The Gap, Old Navy’s parent company, remains convinced that people want more, and it seems to be right. In 1998, when Old Navy opened its first store in downtown Chicago, more than 10,000 people lined up hours before the doors opened. When the San Francisco flagship store opened in 1999, the rush was equally astounding. There were giveaways, rock bands and rabid, clothes-carrying crowds fighting their way to the registers. Never mind that Old Navy carries far fewer pieces of apparel than other comparably sized stores. And never mind that half the clothes are just knockoffs of items available at the Gap. After all, deals are to be had — and shopping at Old Navy is just so cool!

Ikea is an even bigger phenomenon. More than 320 million people worldwide walked through one of the Swedish company’s stores last year. That’s more than seven times the number of people who visited all four of Disney’s theme parks.

Shoppers can claim that they’re just being good consumers — that buying a $179 Poang chair at Ikea is actually ecofriendly. Old Navy shoppers might say they’re just frugal. Not so, according to critics like Christine Rosen, a professor in the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley. According to Rosen, people who fill their closets, homes and lives with Old Navy and Ikea — or Pottery Barn or a host of other slick stores — are simply new examples of the trend toward conformity that started when the first “brands” appeared in the 1910s and ’20s, says “We’re Pavlovianly trained to respond to this,” she says.

And we’re also just too damn lazy. That’s the theory floated by Packard Jennings, an anti-consumerism activist who says that stores like Old Navy are designed to numb the brain and remove all semblance of creativity from the purchasing process. “Ikea pre-arranges sets of furniture in its stores, thereby lessening individual thought,” he says. Once people are in the store, they can’t resist. “Entire households are purchased at Ikea,” he says.

Indeed, Janice Simonsen, an Ikea spokeswoman, confirmed that a large part of the chain’s demographic consists of “people who come in and say, ‘I need everything.’” Meanwhile, those who don’t want everything usually end up with more than they need, says Fordham’s Reichart. “The way they design their stores” — with an up escalator to the showroom and no exit until the checkout — “you end up going through the entire store,” he says.

Old Navy plays by the same sneaky rules. When Frank and I entered the San Francisco store, clerks offered us giant mesh bags. Ostensibly, this is just good service, but since the bags are capable of holding at least half a dozen pairs of jeans and a few shirts, it’s obvious that they’re also meant to encourage overconsumption.

Frank called the bags “gross” but not out of line with other state-of-the-art retailing practices. But according to Klein, the sacks, in conjunction with Old Navy’s penchant for displaying T-shirts in mock-1950s supermarket coolers, prove that the company is aiming to do something more. The idea behind this “theater for the brand” architecture is to commodify the products, to make them “as easy to buy as a gallon of milk,” Klein says.

“The idea is to create a Mecca where people make pilgrimages to their brand,” Klein says. “You experience the identity of the brand and not the product.”

Disney, which opened its first store in 1987, was the first to employ this strategy. And since then others have appeared. Niketown, the Body Shop, the Discovery Store — they all aim to sell products by selling a destination.

Old Navy and Ikea, however, are far more popular than those predecessors — and, if you believe the more pessimistic of their critics, more dangerous. Not only are the two chains remaking many closets and homes into one designer showcase, says Klein, but they are also lulling consumers to sleep and encouraging them to overlook some important issues.

Such as quality. People think they’re getting “authenticity on the cheap,” says David Lewis, author of “The Soul of the New Consumer.” But the truth may be that they’re simply purchasing the perception of quality and authenticity. “Because [Ikea and Old Navy] create these self-enclosed lifestyles,” Klein explains, “you overlook the fact that the products are pretty crappy and fall apart.” Adds Jennings, “Things may be cheaper, but you keep going back to replace the faulty merchandise.”

Then there is the trap of materialism. Survey after survey suggests that people who place a high value on material goods are less happy than those who do not, says Eric Rindfleisch, a marketing professor at the University of Arizona. The focus on bargains, incremental purchases and commodification plays to a uniquely American blind spot.

“We operate with a duality,” explains Rindfleisch, who has conducted studies linking materialism with depression. “Americans know that money doesn’t buy happiness, but most people somehow believe that increments in pay or goods will improve our lives. It’s a human weakness — particularly in America.”

The most insidious danger may be more abstract. The anti-consumerism critics argue that by elevating shopping to cultural status, we are losing our grip on real culture. We live in a time where college kids think nothing of decorating their rooms with Absolut vodka ads and fail to realize that they’re essentially turning their rooms into billboards. Meanwhile, museum stores keep getting larger, Starbucks sells branded CDs to go with your coffee and because Ikea and other stores now look like movie theaters or theme parks, we don’t just shop, “we make a day of it,” as Klein puts it.

This only helps steer us away from other endeavors. When people spend so much time buying, thinking and talking about products, they don’t have time for anything else, for real conversations about politics or culture or for real interaction with people.

Ultimately, the popularity of Old Navy, Ikea and their ilk proves that we’re stuck in what Harvard professor Juliet Schor calls “the cycle of work and spend.” Breaking that cycle may not be easy, but if one believes critics like Frank, it’s essential if we are to control our own culture, instead of allowing it to be defined by corporations.

The cycle may not be possible to break. Frank, for one, is extremely pessimistic about our chances for turning back the tide of conformity and co-opted cool. Maybe that’s one reason why he wanted to get out of Old Navy as fast as he could.

But I’m not so sure. When “Ikea boy,” Edward Norton’s character in “Fight Club,” watched his apartment and his Swedish furniture explode in a blaze of glory, I wasn’t the only one in the theater who cheered.

Norton is psychologically castrated because of his office job, condo ownership and addiction to catalog shopping. Fincher’s hilarious tour of the condo pans the living room and floats the Ikea catalog description of tables and chairs above the pieces, so that the catalog copy becomes the air Norton breathes. Similarly, Geraldine Page in “Interiors” arranged perfect white flowers in perfect white vases because she was a repressed aesthete, and Maureen Stapleton knew how to have a good time since she knocks over one of said vases — drunk and dancing. If both maddening films are partly about gender, they are also partly about housewares. Namely, the neuroses not just of ownership and consumer goods, but the supposed spiritual void symbolized by a nice-looking room.

The difference between exploring overboard feminine home decoration and male domesticity is of course that the home front is the female domain. The catalyst for Norton, whom Pitt nicknames “Ikea Boy,” to dump his cozily crisp Scandinavian modern digs for Pitt’s rat-hole, where even sheets on the bare stained mattresses would be too soft, is an exchange the two men have when they meet on an airplane. Pitt asks Norton if he knows what a duvet is — he does — and poses the philosophical inquiry, “Why do guys like you and I know what a duvet is? Is this essential to our survival in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word?”

That the word “dude” doesn’t crop up in this dialogue is some kind of miracle. And thus Norton’s horrifying textile awareness — call it the embarrassment of stitches — sends him to the rest of the film, which is all about bloody male bonding and hitting and is more or less furniture-free. (On the duvet question, my friend David blurted, “I’d rather know what a duvet is than an Abdominator, which is clearly all Brad Pitt did to prepare for his role.”)

I called John Christakos, a co-founder of the delightful Minnesota furniture design company Blu Dot, and asked him if he supposed his shelving and coffee tables were contributing to the downfall of masculinity in America. He said, “I hope so. That is our goal.” I asked him about his son, pictured in the Blu Dot Web site’s very manly recipe section, and his son’s mother. Are his wife’s girlfriends jealous of her having a husband with a sense of the domicile? “Yeah. Chicks dig that. I’m a designer,” he laughed. “It’s like being a rock star.”

One of the most horrifying aspects of “Fight Club” is that the transformation of Norton from nerd to asshole is not motivated by the most proper reason for a young straight man to change his life, which is of course to impress girls. If he wanted to attract more women (or at least women other than the movie’s sole female star, the skittish mascara vamp Helena Bonham Carter), he would have become himself, but more so — better house, better furniture, better job. He would have turned into Chris Noth’s infuriating charmer Mr. Big on HBO’s “Sex in the City.” Because when Big breaks the heart of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), the viewer isn’t wistful because she’ll miss a shallow cad like him but because now she’s going to have to settle for sleeping with guys with lower thread-count sheets. What if, heaven forbid, her future boyfriends’ bedding will be part polyester percale? It could turn into one of those princess-and-the-pea situations, you know?

Ben Karlin, head writer for the relatively butch “Daily Show With Jon Stewart” on Comedy Central, divides his current obsessions among his dog, finding a balance between comedy and truth, and, not least, his new crushed velvet moss green chaise longue. This is not just a man who knows what a duvet is, he is a man who asserts, “I think a nice duvet can help make a room.”

In “Fight Club,” Norton’s character complains, “I’d flip through catalogs and wonder what kind of dining set defined me as a person.” Asked if he feels that way about his chaise, Karlin says, “I’m afraid of it defining me is what I would say. I couldn’t buy it without in some way undercutting that purchase. It’s such a fancy piece of furniture — and not just fancy for a male, it’s fancy for a young person. When I got it, I insisted on the store giving me the sign that hung over it. It was this flourishy description of it: ‘The chaise longue is the most decadent feeling in the world! Crushed Velvet!’ I got the sign and hung it over the chaise in the apartment. You can’t look at one without the other. A purchase like that is loaded.”

If Karlin, like Norton in “Fight Club,” were called Ikea Boy, would he take offense? “Yeah, but probably not for the same reason. I think Ikea is cheap. Most of their stuff looks like the stuff you try to get to make your place look nice if you don’t have a lot of money. But if you don’t have a lot of money, you should just be a little more creative. Spend a little time, whether it’s flea markets or whatever. So if someone called me Ikea Boy, it wouldn’t bother me because I surrendered some notion of toughness but because it implies I have bad taste.” He chuckles a second before adding, “But I’m telling you! I’m straight!”

The thing cartoons like “Fight Club” and “Interiors” miss about human beings who are concerned with the domestic sphere is a certain realistic complexity. There’s nothing wrong with living somewhere decent. Is there a more appealing scene in cinema than the one in John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” where the Joad family finally lands at a clean, kind migrant camp? The look on Henry Fonda’s face when he learns his tired old ma can rest in lovely surroundings after so much meanness and filth is one of the most human expressions ever captured on celluloid. Remembering that look when Pitt utters generational, are-we-not-men nonsense like “our Great Depression is our lives” in “Fight Club” is, well, depressing.

Because you don’t have to wear red dresses like Maureen Stapleton to be a passionate individual and you can, like I did last week, spend 18 seconds plopping daisies in a vase without forgetting more important things like my workload and that I love my father enough to call him on his birthday. When Ben Karlin was talking up the simple joy of his new chaise lounge, I brought up a scene in the other current middle-class-male-gets-real film, “American Beauty.” Married couple Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening are finally getting along well enough to make out on their living room couch and the mood gets ruined when Bening notices Spacey’s about to spill beer on the upholstery. If things were going well with Karlin and a lady friend on his beloved chaise, would he mind a little mess? “I thought that was a great scene,” he answers. “This has happened to me before. If I’m having a really good moment, I don’t give a shit about anything. The way they played that scene was very arch. I know there have been times with food items on my nice stuff, and you just kind of go with it because you realize, you hope that if you’re young and you’re in the middle of life, that’s the reason you’re alive.”

My response was that advertisers simply put the money where the eyeballs are. Four out of five eyeballs prefer crap to quality. Advertisers have a job to do. They want to reach as many eyeballs as possible, and preferably eyeballs that will be interested in what you have to sell. Hence, sports gear in Gear, cosmetics in Cosmo, and so on. If you want to have an intelligent, beautiful publication that’s fine. But you shouldn’t be shocked if subscription cards aren’t overflowing your mailbox and advertisers aren’t pounding down your door, wads of cash in hand, no strings attached.

But surprise, surprise. Speak has managed, somehow, to publish yet another issue. And in it, Rolleri returns to his lament for yet another go-round. (Along the way he calls me a “cynical Salon writer” with IPO issues.) Dan makes some interesting points. He establishes what we all know: Certain men’s and women’s magazines are more about selling product than providing content. Dan feels — and I agree — that readers should be aware of that fact. (Increasingly consumers are, which has led to more covert techniques.)

But then things get weird. Dan believes that advertisers prefer magazines that publish stupid content (Alyssa Milano’s breasts, oral sex advice) not only because “one million young men” can’t resist it, but because it makes the ads the smartest thing in the publication. “If magazine buyers, specifically glossy magazine buyers, seem stupid,” Dan says in direct reference to my earlier reply, “it’s because there are only stupid magazines.”

But Dan’s real problem isn’t with his flashier older brothers getting all the breaks. He simply believes he’s entitled to advertising money, too — and shouldn’t have to lower his standards to get it, as I suggested he would have to do. “This fall I plan to meet as many potential advertisers and agencies as will allow me through their doors,” he writes dramatically. “And at this moment, with so many doubts about the industry and Speak’s place in it, I have no idea what I’m going to say.”

Will Dan be allowed to pitch his product in the hallowed halls of advertisingdom? Will Speak be given gobs of sexy cash without compromising its editorial integrity? Or will Jennifer Love Hewitt bare all in next season’s issue? This young cynic will stay tuned. Because, in fact, I like Speak and want it (sans the burdensome editor’s notes, of course) to keep on publishing its lushly designed pages and interesting articles about people I admire. Go, Dan, go!

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Stay Free, Fall/Winter 1999

A pair of khaki-clad feet dangle, lifeless, above a knocked-over stool and the caption “khakis swing.” This macabre image graces the back cover of the latest issue of Stay Free. The message? Advertising kills. Or it makes you want to kill yourself. Or something. This is one of several zines dedicated to, ahem, “exploring issues surrounding commercialism and American culture,” as Stay Free so politely puts it. Adbusters has mastered advertising’s visual vernacular, and used it subvert the medium’s methods and messages. Beer Frame uses Spy magazine-like reporting tactics and witty prose to make fun of consumer marketing.

What does Stay Free bring to this ever-growing crowd of ad-hating agitators? It aspires to introduce an academic, studied perspective on advertising to the zine world. To a degree it’s successful. The front-of-the-book quotes from egregious press releases is like a one-track Harper’s readings section — quite amusing. Editor Carrie McLaren’s article chronicling how corporations have invented ailments through advertising — Fleishman Yeast’s recommending its product to treat “intestinal fatigue,” for example — is illuminating. But while some of the faux ads were right on target (“Panexa: Ask Your Doctor for a Reason to Take It”), others, like “khakis swing,” were non sequiturs. And the 11-page dialogue between two media academics, unfortunately, works better as a sedative than catalyst for discussion.

Orlando Weekly, Oct. 14-20

“A Smithsonian Tupperware Party” by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

I agree that the Smithsonian’s decision to dedicate an entire book and exhibit to Tupperware, also a loyal donor, is suspect, as Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman point out in this article. Certainly, the increase in corporate funding to public ventures like museums and public radio does raise serious issues. But I hardly think the plastic maker and museum curators conspired to leave out information on how plastics are destroying the planet and soon we’ll all be dead because of all the Tupperware we bought. Chill out, people! It’s not like the exhibit was extolling the virtues of disposable diapers and cigarette smoke.

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S.F. Bay Guardian, Oct. 13-19

“Go Gentle” by Stephanie Hiller

As large companies have swallowed most of the funeral industry whole, prices have risen while choices for grieving families have decreased, leaving many wondering what other options exist. It’s not a new debate. Jessica Mitford brought the situation to national attention in 1963 with her book “The American Way of Death.” In 1987, Lisa Carlson published “Caring for Your Own Dead.” In this article, Stephanie Hiller does a wonderful job of explaining the troubles within the funeral industry, outlining a history of opposition to traditional burial methods and looks at several pioneers working to provide alternatives.

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The Stranger, Oct. 14-20

“Over Four Million Served” by Ben Jacklett

The sixth largest employer in the United States is Labor Ready, a temp agency for unskilled workers. The company pays around $6 an hour, collects as much for its own costs and profits, has workers sign extensive release forms protecting Labor Ready from paying worker’s comp and other benefits, and frequently provides scabs during organized-labor disputes. In this fascinating report, Ben Jacklett signs up for work and explores this company’s climb to success and the hair-raising tactics it uses to maintain its fortune.

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Feed, Oct. 12

“Space, the New IKEA Magazine” by Matthew DeBord

I was a student at the University of Washington when IKEA opened up a store outside Seattle. There will always be a special place in my heart for that fine purveyor of warehouse chic. Matthew DeBord examines the cult of IKEA in this critical look at IKEA’s new brand-extending magazine, Space. (Advertising-driven content at its finest!) “Space is a revelation,” he writes. “It validates the worldview of anyone who has ever sat in his IKEA chair and wondered if the food he eats is adequately IKEA, if the clothes he wears look sufficiently IKEA — if, in other words, there is an aesthetic that unifies his existence. The 17th century had Shakespeare, the 19th century had Hegel. In the late 20th, we resolve our dialectical crises with the Jussi coffee table.”

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L.A. Weekly, Oct. 15-21

“Love and Hell” by Jonny Whiteside

A wonderful, detailed profile of the persona, career, past and present of Merle Haggard.