apparent freedom of New York abstract expressionist painting led him to believe that he could mean everything by saying anything. Nor are we told that Robert Lowell would
spend the later and incoherently copious part of his career making sure that he would never again attain the rhetorical magnificence of the opening lines of ‘Man and Wife’. But Paglia
knows why, and how, those lines are magnificent: and in Lowell’s case, among her specific remarks, there is a general one that typifies her knack of extending an aesthetic question into the
moral sphere. Lowell’s ‘confessional’ streak insulted his loved ones. The same question is posed again by Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’, an agonised masterpiece by
which Paglia is driven to a stretch of critical writing that stands out for its richness even in a rich book.
Applying her particularised admiration to rescue the poem from those who cite it as a mantra, Paglia points out an awkward truth about Plath as a feminist Winged Victory: that her poetry was in
‘erudite engagement with canonical male writers’. A still more awkward truth is that the manner of Plath’s suicide helped to set up her husband Ted Hughes as an abuser of women.
Paglia defends Hughes against Plath, a defence that few feminists have dared to undertake. She also defends Plath’s father against Plath, which might seem a quixotic move in view of the
poem’s subject matter, but does help to make the point that Plath, by calling her father a Nazi and identifying herself with millions of helpless victims, was personalising the Holocaust in a
way that only her psychic disturbance could excuse. Leaving out the possibility that Plath might have been saying she was nuts, Paglia does Plath the honour of taking her at her word. But
you can’t do her that honour without bringing her down off her pedestal. The poet used her unquestionable talent to say some very questionable things, and there’s no way out of it.
Paglia is tough enough to accept that conclusion: tough enough, that is, not to complain when she winds up all alone.
She seems to enjoy being alone. It’s a handy trait for the sort of thinker who can’t see an orthodoxy form without wanting not to be part of it. Google her for half an hour and you
will find her fighting battles with other feminists all over cyberspace. Telling us how she became, at the age of four, a ‘lifelong idolator of pagan goddesses’ after seeing Ava Gardner
in Showboat , she tells us why she is less than thrilled with Madonna. It’s a view I share, but at least Madonna manufactured herself. Ava Gardner from South Carolina was manufactured
in a Hollywood studio, as she was the first to admit. And what is Paglia doing, saying that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has ‘the mentality of a pancake’? How many pancake brains
could do what Heche did with David Mamet’s dialogue in Wag the Dog ? And what about her performance in One Kill ? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of
all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in
Philadelphia.
Paglia by now should be famous enough to start throttling back on some of the stuff she is famous for. She might make a start with bitchery, for which she has a taste but no touch. The media
want snide remarks from her the same way that the Sahara wants rain. But writers capable of developing a nuanced position over the length of an essay should not be tempted into believing that they
can sum it up in a sound-bite. Liberal orthodoxy will always need opposing, but not on the basis that all its points are self-evidently absurd. According to Paglia, gun abuse is a quirk of the
sexually dysfunctional. That might be right, but people aren’t necessarily deluded when they want a ban for the sort of gun that can kill a dozen people in half a minute. Waiting
spend the later and incoherently copious part of his career making sure that he would never again attain the rhetorical magnificence of the opening lines of ‘Man and Wife’. But Paglia
knows why, and how, those lines are magnificent: and in Lowell’s case, among her specific remarks, there is a general one that typifies her knack of extending an aesthetic question into the
moral sphere. Lowell’s ‘confessional’ streak insulted his loved ones. The same question is posed again by Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’, an agonised masterpiece by
which Paglia is driven to a stretch of critical writing that stands out for its richness even in a rich book.
Applying her particularised admiration to rescue the poem from those who cite it as a mantra, Paglia points out an awkward truth about Plath as a feminist Winged Victory: that her poetry was in
‘erudite engagement with canonical male writers’. A still more awkward truth is that the manner of Plath’s suicide helped to set up her husband Ted Hughes as an abuser of women.
Paglia defends Hughes against Plath, a defence that few feminists have dared to undertake. She also defends Plath’s father against Plath, which might seem a quixotic move in view of the
poem’s subject matter, but does help to make the point that Plath, by calling her father a Nazi and identifying herself with millions of helpless victims, was personalising the Holocaust in a
way that only her psychic disturbance could excuse. Leaving out the possibility that Plath might have been saying she was nuts, Paglia does Plath the honour of taking her at her word. But
you can’t do her that honour without bringing her down off her pedestal. The poet used her unquestionable talent to say some very questionable things, and there’s no way out of it.
Paglia is tough enough to accept that conclusion: tough enough, that is, not to complain when she winds up all alone.
She seems to enjoy being alone. It’s a handy trait for the sort of thinker who can’t see an orthodoxy form without wanting not to be part of it. Google her for half an hour and you
will find her fighting battles with other feminists all over cyberspace. Telling us how she became, at the age of four, a ‘lifelong idolator of pagan goddesses’ after seeing Ava Gardner
in Showboat , she tells us why she is less than thrilled with Madonna. It’s a view I share, but at least Madonna manufactured herself. Ava Gardner from South Carolina was manufactured
in a Hollywood studio, as she was the first to admit. And what is Paglia doing, saying that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has ‘the mentality of a pancake’? How many pancake brains
could do what Heche did with David Mamet’s dialogue in Wag the Dog ? And what about her performance in One Kill ? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of
all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in
Philadelphia.
Paglia by now should be famous enough to start throttling back on some of the stuff she is famous for. She might make a start with bitchery, for which she has a taste but no touch. The media
want snide remarks from her the same way that the Sahara wants rain. But writers capable of developing a nuanced position over the length of an essay should not be tempted into believing that they
can sum it up in a sound-bite. Liberal orthodoxy will always need opposing, but not on the basis that all its points are self-evidently absurd. According to Paglia, gun abuse is a quirk of the
sexually dysfunctional. That might be right, but people aren’t necessarily deluded when they want a ban for the sort of gun that can kill a dozen people in half a minute. Waiting
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