Camille Paglia is back, wank follows.
Props to the Wank Report mousies.

Over at Salon.com, infamous "feminist" Camille Paglia* makes her return after a six year hiatus. The second paragraph of her return column serves as a welcome mat to her fans or a warning sign to the haters, depending on your POV.

I had certainly assumed the Web was surfeited with more than enough material, but evidently many others beside myself find the partisan polarization of the blogosphere numbingly predictable and its prose too often slapdash, fragmentary or drearily prolix.

Um... What?

The Salon readers are, for the most part, going 1/3s "Yay, she's back" and 2/3s "OH HELL NO!"

For. Five. Hundred. Plus. Entries.

There are some choice potshots to be had, at Paglia herself, her haters, and a couple at Molly Irvins (whom one of the first posters referenced re: her appraisal of Paglia).

Internet commentary is serious bizness!

* Reader Rupert sums up Paglia's style thusly:

One third worthwhile insight, incisively articulated.

One third provocation for the hell of it (also worthwhile).

One third damn fool nonsense, delivered in the written-word equivalent of bombastic prog rock.

Stir up with equal parts narcissism and generosity.

Personally, I tend to think of her as the batshit liberal ying to Ann Coulter's batshit conservative yang.

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seraphtrevs
2007-02-19 12:50 am UTC (link)

I just checked, and I actually still have the book - it's from Sexual Personae:

Emily Dickenson is the female Sade, and her poems are the prison dreams of a self-incarcerated, sadomasochistic imaginist. When she is rescued from American Studies departments and juxtaposed with Dante and Baudelaire, her barbarities and diabolical acts of will become glaringly apparent.

Page 624, totally true!

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	iwanttobeasleep 2007-02-19 12:51 am UTC (link)
	She's either never read Sade, Dickens, or I really want some of what she's smoking. That is batshit of the highest degree. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	WHAT. freezer 2007-02-19 01:09 am UTC (link)
	(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: WHAT.

seraphtrevs
2007-02-19 01:18 am UTC (link)

Dickinson strews puncture wounds liberally through her poetry. She says of one of her heroes, "Fate...Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes" (1031). Fiercest may mean sharpest, but it could also mean bluntest, to maximize the pain. In this savage tableau, a cruel goddess wait with a sheaf of stationary spears, nature's phallic stockade. Elsewhere Dickinson declares, "No Rack can torture me": the soul is something "You Cannot prick with saw/Nor pierce with Scimaitar" (384). These negatives are paraleipsis: what cannot be done to the soul *can* be done to the body.

Man, I forgot how funny she is.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: WHAT. brown_betty 2007-02-19 02:01 am UTC (link)
	You know, it's awesome when people use the internet to argue that Grover is a symbol for queer identity. When they do it seriously, though, it's sort of a cross between sad and scary. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: WHAT. napalmnacey 2007-02-19 05:03 am UTC (link)
	Oh for God's sakes. I loved that book as a kid. He just FORGOT he was a monster! Christ! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: WHAT. brown_betty 2007-02-19 05:05 am UTC (link)
	Uh... maybe I should have put rel="irony" on that link. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: WHAT. napalmnacey 2007-02-19 05:09 am UTC (link)
	Sorry. I'm lacking in the humour today. (It's been one of those weeks). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: WHAT. sepiamagpie 2007-02-19 10:23 pm UTC (link)
	www.kittenwar.com not here. It is the best advice I can ever give you, my student (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: WHAT. napalmnacey 2007-02-20 04:21 am UTC (link)
	Thank you, Master Jedi. bows respectfully (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: WHAT. littlest_lurker 2007-02-19 05:27 am UTC (link)
	I &hearts the person who wrote that now. Hee! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: WHAT. anonyrat 2007-02-19 06:14 am UTC (link)
	a cruel goddess wait with a sheaf of stationary spears, nature's phallic stockade I think my brain just shut off in self defense. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: WHAT. (Anonymous) 2007-02-19 06:38 am UTC (link)
	That was quite the image, yes. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2007-02-19 08:28 pm UTC (link)
	When I tried to read Sexual Personae about a decade ago at the urging of a friend, I got to the point where she said (paraphrasing): "My aim is to unify Frazer and Freud." I laughed so hard I nearly hurt myself, and then I returned the book. This sentence reaffirms my decision. Thank you. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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