The
controversy surrounding a book of this type shows readers and pundits what
narrow confines they inhabit and not the shocking revelations of the author.
To those who find what Paglia says outrageous --- when her scholarship
and clear thinking demonstrate the contrary ---we turn to another author
Lillian Hellman who said that cynicism is merely an unpleasant way of saying
the truth, for what Paglia here espouses is truth of the higher order.
The feminists decry her as a radical; the sensualists, sentimentalists
and apologists find her cynical. She is not. Rather Paglia
sees clearly without the blinders of political, religious, or social moralizing
agenda --- and celebrates life and sexuality, and its symbologies sans
dogma and dictum and brings us into a closer relationship with ourselves
and our genders. Read it and be enlightened.Order Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae Today
Camille Paglia's monumental study of Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to
Emily Dickenson is a sociological tour de force that examines, explores,
and explains much more than the subtitle declaims. Rather it is a
book about how we as human beings have seen, experienced, and used sex
as an articulation to express our hungers, our frailties, our fears, and
our power. It is a book about sex, surely, and that usually frightens
readers or presumes them to titillation. But Paglia titillates the
mind --- that most powerful of sociological and sexual organs --- into
new thinking, in which we all --- in light of her erudition and thoughtfulness
--- appear once more as virgins.