=2013 Books Read=

Glittering Images
Camille Paglia

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT THIS BOOK
1. Camille Paglia. She's one of my intellectual heroes. She's one of those very rare writers who can write with wit and erudition about a breadbox. She's provocative without being dogmatic or doctrinaire.  She's a contrarian. One of the exciting things about reading her is that you never know for sure what side of an issue she is going to come down on. Even if you like her, you're bound to be in disagreement with her at least 30% of the time.

2. Glittering Images is a lightning-quick tour through art history from ancient Egypt to contemporary film-making. It makes no claim at comprehensiveness. It's an outline, basically, from which you can launch your own further study if you're so inclined. It's fast and fun but full of info. I read it in less than two days.

WHAT'S ARGUABLE ABOUT THIS BOOK
1. The choices Paglia makes about what to include and exclude. Disagreement is inevitable in a book like this when, like Pagila, you decide to choose 29 pieces of art as representative of the entire thrust of human artistic endeavor. It's an exclusive shortlist and practically everyone isn't getting an invitation to the party. As an intellectual and cultural provocateur, Paglia has a reputation of her own to uphold and she does so with some of her choices here. No Leonardo or Botticelli or Michelangelo, which, I have to say, was kind of a relief. Who hasn't read enough interpretations of the Mona Lisa and the Sistine Chapel ceiling? But John Wesley Hardrick (an obscure African-American portrait painter from mid-century Indianapolis)? George Lucas, "our greatest living artist"? Some of these choices really seem like over-stretches. Paglia plays the intellectual Gumby, I think, in the dual interest of being inclusive and controversial. But she pulls it off for the most part, exposing us to artists that have been underexposed and using them as departure points to discuss other associated artists and art-movements.

2. The price: too expensive. This book, in hardcover, though well-made and printed on that creepy (to me) slippery kind of paper that is hard to scribble notes on, is too short (190 pages of actual content) and costs too much. It's a night-stand book at an almost coffee-table price. I borrowed it from the library. That's what I'd suggest you do, too.

WHAT'S NOT SO GOOD ABOUT THIS BOOK
1. It isn't Sexual Personae, which remains Paglia's magnum opus. Her fans have been waiting for the long-ago promised follow-up to that masterpiece for years. Of course, it's not entirely fair to criticize Glittering Images for not being Sexual Personae, except to say that what we have in Glittering Images isn't Paglia's best work. 

Which leads to a much fairer criticism...

2. Paglia herself presents Glittering Images as art history for laypeople. But she's too sly and snarky to be Sister Wendy. And I think that's who she's trying to be here--a perverse Sister Wendy. And it doesn't quite work. Though this book is aimed towards a middle-brow audience it misses the mark, erring high. But not quite high enough for those who want more depth and detail, not to mention the full monty of Paglia's trademark attitude. In the end, Glittering Images is likely to be hard to digest for one audience and not quite satisfying enough for another. 

Another reason I don't think the book is ultimately worth the price of admission. 

MY ADVICE
Eat more pie. I never heard of anyone on their deathbed regretting that they ate too much pie. Ditto: chocolate chip pancakes.