From: rhogan@phakt.usc.edu (Ron Hogan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Paglia (was: Cross-Writing)
Date: 6 Jan 1993 18:32:47 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: phakt.usc.edu

Heather writes:
(in response to Ron Hogan)

>Paglia is a critic rather than a historian.  You read critics for their
>opinions, not to get an unbiased, objective view.

But those opinions should (I think) be rooted in, if not unbiased, at least
a semi-objective analysis of the work.  Dealing with Sterne in a paragraph
because you find him *tiresome* isn't criticism; it's coffeehouse chat.

Also, SP is cultural criticism, bordering on anthropology/psychology.  If
I remember correctly, her stated models in the introduction were Frazer
and Freud.  Social scientists, to be sure, but scientists, not critics.

>In _Sexual_Personae_ Paglia cites a huge number of references, as you mention
>in your post.

And when she runs out out of references to support her opinion, she restates
her opinion, to make sure you get the point.  Some chapters more than others.

>>And let's face it, Paglia herself contributes to the identification 
>>of her personality with the book's content through every TV or 
>>magazine appearance she does.  
>So does every author who appears on TV or in a magazine -- William F.
>Buckley, Garrison Keillor, Stephen King.  That's why they do it.  It doesn't
>mean that one can fall back on criticizing their personalities instead of the
>merits of their books.

The difference being that they most of them aren't trying to explain the
history of the world.  Stephen King and Garrison Keillor do publicity gigs
for the sake of getting people to buy their books becuase the books are
good reads, entertaining fictions.  William F. Buckley, while he is trying
to explain the world, doesn't, at least in the media events in which I've
seen him participate, urge people to buy his book because he's right and
his critical opponents are fatheads.  He also tends to appear on news shows,
which have a pretense of discussing the issues in an informative way, and
in magazines (most notably his own) that operate from the same premise.

Whereas Camille Paglia appears on "talk shows" that focus on personalities
and superficial discussion of the issues-- but I could be wrong, she may
have done a serious talk show I don't know about-- and in celebrity
oriented magazines like Vanity Fair-- and generates the cult of personality
around herself.  This isn't just me arbitrarily linking a discussion of
SP's content to her personality.  She *invites* the connection through her
writing as well as in her appearances as an 'author'-- a term which in
itself links the text to an identifiable personality.

And when I say she appears in magazines, I mean cases in which she is the
subject of a profile, not the cases in which she authors an essay.

And to be honest, I don't see that I *have* been actively criticizing
the components of her personality, except when I said she tended to namecall
her critics.  What I have been criticizing is the decision on her part
to bring that personality to the forefront of her historical criticism,
a decision which I feel, in the particular way she executes it, is not
wholly effective as critical technique.

There's nothing wrong with being a popular explainer of science-- Asimov
and Sagan did it very well.  There's nothing wrong with being a pop
historian-- Greil Marcus does it well.  And in some sections of SP,
as I've mentioned, Paglia does pop social/literary/historical criticism
rather well.

It's not on the level of, say, Simon Schama or Carlo Ginzburg, but it's OK.
And I'd venture so far as to say that the reason that it doesn't match up
to those authors is because Paglia attempts to take on a subject of much
broader scale than _The_Embarassment_of_Riches_ or _The_Worm_and_the_Cheese_,
and as a result her skills are spread thinner.

As for the Bette Davis et al. cults among male homosexuals, I personally
think she's blowing it way out of proportion.  I imagine that the number
of male homosexuals who admire Bette Davis, for example, is not
*significantly* greater than those who admire a different type of actress
such as Vivien Leigh.  Or at least in no significant percentage different
from the percentage of the sum total of the filmgoing/film appreciating
culture.  It's what Hollywood throws out for us to appreciate.  If male
homosexuals were out preserving Thelma Todd's memory or something, that
would be a cult.

At worst, though, her use of the homosexual Bette Davis cult analogy
comes dangerously close to justification of specious stereotyping.

Ron Hogan
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books