Letters to the Editor
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Congratulations!
As a self-described social libertarian/democratic socialist who is open to, and profits from opinions which don't exactly mirror my own, I'm delighted at Camille's return!
In the 80's, when I was a radical leftist in my teens and early twenties, PC "critical theorists" made life and art such a drag... How many seemingly intelligent people I encountered were ready to sweep the entirety of Western culture into the dustbin of history (without, I might add, knowing a damn thing about it!) with the flick of a wrist attached to a grubby fist clutching a newly-minted copy of "History of Sexuality" or "The Anti-Aesthetic", or some such drivel... All of them cueing up to join the Army of Overgrown Adolescents with Unresolved Oedipus/Electra Complexes, as if being a joiner came with some kind of badge of honor... As a would-be radical humanist, I put my faith in, and found transcendence via human culture, whether Classic, Modern, or Pop. I learned the hard way -that is, by slogging through mountains of obfuscatory post-modern prose that these supposed "Marxists" DID believe in "power to the people", as long as said people belonged to their little clique, which had endless energy to devote to disseminating mystifying catch-phrases to be employed upon the uninitiated as the matador makes with the cape, while having no time at all to actually read the books or watch the films they ironically claimed were a plot to turn us all into cowering submissives...
"Sexual Personae" changed all that for me. For the first time in a book of intellectual criticism published after the '70's, I found crisp, clear, vigorous prose, prose designed to excite, to intoxicate, even... And I found ideas, ideas which have sustained me to this day. It opened up a world in which intellectualism had some relationship to human reality. This book, and interviews with Paglia clued me in to writers such as Jung, Neumann, Eliade, Frazer, Walter Otto, McLuhan, Langer, Norman O. Brown, the Marxist art-historian Arnold Hauser, the Cambridge school of anthropologists, just to name a few... Yes, I'd heard of some of these before, but where were the teachers to reccomend them, to get one excited about thinking, about studying culture and history? They had time only for gobbledygook power games...
Greil Marcus (a right-wing fascist, right?) called her book "a red comet in a smog infested sky" (or something like that, I quote from my memory of the back cover of the paper-back edition). Anthony Burgess, no slouch in the knowledge or prose departments, called it "very learned", and lauded her prose, writing "every sentence jabs like a needle".(He meant this, of couse, as a compliment, but some might not enjoy being challenged in this manner.) Having read many books, I feel qualified to make a bold statement - "Sexual Personae" is perhaps the most important, in fact, greatest book to be published in the last thirty years in English, and possibly in any other language. Those who would proffer a critique, without having attempted a reading of this tome, are guilty of the grossest intellectual laziness.
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Are we ready to wrap up?
I'm watching a rerun of Bill Maher at the moment. Edwards is on, his hair looks delightfully disheveled, I think the poofery (hmmm...does that mean something?)may be a thing of the past.
He's also got some nice whethering to his face now, my goodness the boy's presidential.
It's good to see Johnny back on the scene, I thought he was a fantasitc orator back in 2004, too bad he had to take the second banna spot back in then, but c'est la guerre.
So shall we sum up? Lots and lots of folks really think Camille's return bodes ill for Salon. A couple of us, perhaps hoping to relive the 90's wonderment that early Salon and Camille influenced world, couldn't be happier to have our favorite lesbian back.
Does she hate the "feminization" of culture? Apperantly, but perhaps that is becaue she feels societies "feminizatoin" fetishizes the worst concepts of sterotypical womanhood, which bears no resemblance to actual womanhood.
Does she relish the folly of World Pop Culture (read American Pop Culture), certainly, but perhaps this is because she has learned today's Pop is tomorrow's Classic. Anna Nicole's excesses may have been the worst of our current culture, but that is what will mark our world to the future, just as the soap operatic stories of Shakespere came to emblamize our vision of his time. Just as the tunes of some mop topped liverpudlians came to be the music of another generation.
I wonder what Camille will say about the fuss she has stirred a month from now? Will she ignore it? Will she embrace it? Will she answer her critics? Will she lambast them?
Tune in one month from now gentle reader.
Same Camille Time, Same Camille Channel.
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Congratulations! pt. 2
I've a few more things to say...
Reading "Sexual Personae" the first time (as she has said about her first reading of Freud) opened new passageways in my brain. Noone I'd encountered tied up history, culture, elements of daily experience, and almost impossible-to-express levels of perception in such an all-encompassing way, and in unbelievably lucid language, to boot! As I slowly, with some effort, but with great pleasure, made my way through her book, I began to notice smart people of both sexes writing in magazines, or discussing in interviews her name, her book, with excitement and intoxication equal to my own. And then, roughly, around the time I was finishing, the WORD came down from the Stalinist high committees: she is NOT one of us, and not to be trusted. She isn't even to be taken seriously, she's just a joke, etc., etc. And so American leftism proved as impervious to critique and evolution as capitalism, or the American political system.
I have to admit I was a bit put off by my first television encounter with her public persona - it took some getting used to. And while both "The Birds" and "Break, Blow, Burn" are mostly excellent, and largely superb, her essays have been a mixed bag, always containing marvelous thoughts and arguments, but sometimes stylistically overwrought. She attacks mental small-fry with elephant guns (perhaps she needs to access the inner-ninja archetype). If I've had one real disappointment in her, however, it would be in the absence of the once-promised "Sexual Personae" pt.II. I fully concur with her that pop culture since the publication of Vol. 1 has been a disaster, but surely much of what she would discuss would harken back to before the recent decline. And an elucidation of the cultural Titanic of contemparory pop would surely make wonderful fodder for a slim but pungeant pt.3... (All those who attack her for the missing part II in a slash-and-burn style, however, make me laugh... What would they have said back in the day if Beethoven had stuck around a bit after his major work had wound up? "Yeah, you were alright in your time, Ludwig... But watchya done lately?! That 9th don't look so hot now, eh, hot shot?)
I'm not the fan of capitalism she is. I'm mystified, even stymied by her defense of the dreaded Limbaugh. I'd really like to know her theories regarding the reasons for the self-destruction of pop culture. It's taken me a while to get used to the reality of how she actually sees things. Our immediate concerns with the contemporary political scene is just part of her world-view: when she thinks of Bush, he's being compared to (politically)successful-at-first, then failed Roman emperpors; pop divas are potential Cleopatras. She regards all human behavior as fitting within the vast panoply of human archetypes. While vitally interested in the now, she sees it as the mere tip of the berg. She's real big picture, see, and offers all who join her a glimpse at the big big picture. What I've been most impressed by over my years of following her work, is how generous she is. She, unlike some supposed-lefists I could name, really likes people, is in fact a connoisseur of people and their behavior. I congratulate Salon and all of us on her return; perhaps naysayers will get an edifying display of what I've been talking about, and hopefully my questions, and those of other fans will be addressed.
Camille Paglia, in my opinion, is the only public intellectual writing in English today who could be considered a GENIUS on the grand scale. Self-willed Lilliputians just won't get it.