Interview with Camille Paglia

Author’s note: This interview comes from 2005, when blogging was all the rage and I had a little blog of my own. I was stunned when Camille Paglia’s agent returned my call and told me that Paglia would be “delighted” for me to interview her. It’s republished here to celebrate its 15th anniversary and also, for posterity since it contains so many wonderful Paglian soundbytes.

This was also the most successful thing I ever wrote in terms of readership (as far as I know), since Andrew Sullivan, Blog King of the day, hyperlinked it and over two million people subsequently clicked on it. The lovely Gary Morris, creator of Bright Lights Film Journal, kindly republished it at that site also .I heard from Paglia directly that Matt Drudge wanted to publish it as his main story the day it went live, but the adult-themed content on my blog meant that didn’t happen.

In 2018 Random House informed me that an excerpt from this interview was included in Paglia’s essay collection released that year, Provocations. The excerpt appeared in the Appendicies of that book — which I certainly didn’t consider a triviality since that sprawling chronicle devoted its many main chapters to subjects like the Mona Lisa, A Streetcar Named Desire, and the death of Prince.

Camille Paglia, the scholar and culture critic, is the University Professor of Humanities and Media…