Armed with "the point of view of Sade," Paglia (Humanities/Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts) charts a vast theory of western culture and its Decadent undertow, detonating sacrosanct contemporary thought and doctrine at every turn. Paglia argues that western art is a splendid, man-made display of the mind, set up to counter the abyss of "violence and lust" that Sade rightly feared in Mother Nature. "Art is a ritualistic binding," she writes, "of the perpetual motion machine that is nature." Women, by their procreative powers, embody nature's bloody, undefined, Draconian force. This biological destiny (not the feminists' patriarchy) has chained them to the cultural sidelines while driving men to recast them into the icy, hard-edged, "sexually unapproachable" beauty of Nefertiti. Paganism, in Paglia's view, gave the West its "pictorialism," an "aggressive eye" reveling in amoral images of sex and violence. Certain "sexual personae" have held sway over western imagination—the Greeks' "beautiful boy" who reappears in the Renaissance as Donatello's David and then as Dorian Gray, or the "vampire" (Medusa, the Mona Lisa, the "femme fatale" of Dietrich and Bacall). In 24 chapters, Paglia traces her themes through countless figures in art and literature, among them Botticelli, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Byron, Baudelaire, Emily Bronte, Swinburne, the Pre-Raphaelites, Whitman, James, and Emily Dickinson, the Decadent imagist of amputation and death, "Amherst's Madame de Sade." Combative, shock-loving, unpruned, and fascinating, this treatise goes too far, strains its definitions, and jams too much into dazzling generalities. But, buttressed by troves of research and acute observation, again and again Paglia persuades us to reconsider. "Pagan" in its own pictorialism, sprawl, and unstopped prose, her unusual book creates its brilliant effect from an explosive fusing of scholarship and theater.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1989
ISBN: 0679735798
Page Count: 738
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1989
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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