BY MARIE-JO PROULX
Controversial scholar and public intellectual Camille Paglia was at the University of Chicago April 26 to promote her latest book, Break Blow Burn. In typical voluble style and lightning delivery, her opinionated address was packed with myriad historical and cultural references. She also welcomed questions from the audience and later engaged in animated conversation with every person whose book she signed.
In what reads like a passionate and erudite ode to poetry, Paglia has brought together what she considers 'the 43 best poems in the world.' ( It is worth noting however that all are from Western authors writing in English. This decision is explained in the book's introduction. ) Spanning in time from Shakespeare to Joni Mitchell, each poem is displayed on its own page ( s ) and followed by a short essay in which Paglia explores its context, meaning, and relevance. She said she chose this format so that the poems would hang on the page as paintings in a gallery, the white space around them like a bare wall.
Before discussing specific entries, Paglia declared that her aim was to return prestige and authority to an art form that has long been neglected. 'The important thing that needs to be recovered is emotional resonance, which has been excluded from consideration in this period of hip, cynical, post-modernism,' she declared. It is with this assessment in mind that she geared her selections for young readers, intending the book as 'a gateway to poetry.'
Paglia then went on to explain how she has observed a steady decline in the quality of pop culture since the 1960s. In her view, the guitar has replaced writing in contemporary music, and special effects and digital manipulations have taken over films. While Jean-Luc Goddard pioneered rapid editing generations ago, today's use of the technique is in the hands of 'people without skill,' she affirmed.
Speaking of the emergence of the Web, she said that she embraces this new medium and cited her voluminous contribution to online magazine Salon. Apart from the unprecedented access to information it offers, the Internet's single most important merit, according to Paglia, is that 'it provides a forum for independent thinkers and reduces the dichotomy of Left v. Right.' Commenting on the polarization of mainstream culture, she claimed to listen non-stop to talk radio, which she finds endlessly fascinating.
Deploring the paucity of compelling and articulate arguments from the Left, Paglia pointed to the Bible as a masterpiece, a rich text full of literary qualities like metaphors, lyricism, and epic poetry that religious fundamentalists on the Right have been able to exploit. 'People who have dropped out of school in Appalachia can live with the Bible. … What does the Left have to offer? Attitude, good intentions … . The one thing it has to oppose the Bible is art. That's the only thing from a secular humanist perspective. … There is a huge spiritual hole at the heart of leftism. … We need to have a major revival of American art … .'
With only a few minutes left, Paglia did not read any poems and instead invited the audience to ask questions. She answered some on arts funding and education, one about author Edward Said, whom she knew and admired, and another one about editorial politics in which she ridiculed New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
Paglia then fielded a question about Susan Sontag, whom she accused of having been out of touch as an intellectual. She was especially disapproving of Sontag criticizing the U.S. on her many foreign trips while remaining a New York resident. She also said that reading the eulogies for Sontag in American newspapers, she noticed that most people remembered meeting her at high society parties and not at conferences or in professional settings.
The next questioner referred to Sontag's 'hidden' lesbian identity and asked Paglia for her take on the current state of queer theory.
In what turned out to be a rather long answer, she spoke of a ghetto mentality where slogans and narrow agendas have become 'a recipe for trivialization.' She paid tribute to the opera queen of the pre-Stonewall era for how they used cultural knowledge as a way to construct their identity, which she contrasted with the lack of originality in today's gay culture. 'What I see is an increasing hedonism and a self-absorption on the part of the gay male world… now with The L-Word for lesbians … . We've got to get back to an Oscar Wilde sense, … a gay person as a hero of cultured sensibility … .'
Trying to wrap up her answer, she also mentioned Tennessee Williams and lauded him as an openly gay man, a man of the world who created countless characters who still inhabit literature. Defining him as 'the model of a gay creator,' she rhetorically asked to compare his output with Tony Kushner's ideological work. Perhaps feeling like she had been too forthright, she added 'I'm sorry, I don't mean to harass you,' before starting up again, this time praising Gore Vidal and regretting that gay men today no longer have taste, except on television where they are used as a gimmick for interior decoration shows.
