Articles

Interview with the Vamp: An Interview with Camille Paglia

Keeping up with a rapid-fire radical

Reason , August/September 1995

Hurricane Camille swept into American culture five years ago with the publication of Sexual Personae, a learned 800-page treatise on sex, art, and literature through the ages. After two decades of rejection and obscurity, Camille Paglia was famous. Her demanding master work wasn't exactly accessible to the educated lay reader, but it became a bestseller--as have her subsequent reader-friendly essay collections Sex, Art, and American Culture and Vamps & Tramps.