“It was intended to please no one and to offend everyone. The entire process of the book was to discover the repressed elements of contemporary culture, whatever they are, and palpate them.”
Response to criticism of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, as quoted in "20Q: Camille Paglia" by Warren Kalbacker in Playboy magazine (October 1991) http://www.playboy.co.uk/article/16659/20q-camille-paglia; also in Gauntlet # 4 (1992), p. 133
Context: It was intended to please no one and to offend everyone. The entire process of the book was to discover the repressed elements of contemporary culture, whatever they are, and palpate them. One of the main premises was to demonstrate that pornography is everywhere in major art. Art history as written is completely sex free, repressive and puritanical. I want precision and historical knowledge, but at the same time, I try to zap it with pornographic intensity.
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Camille Paglia 326
American writer 1947Related quotes
“If you try to please everyone you’ll please no one.”
“It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.”
Religion and Literature (1935)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Afterword (1984)
Context: Uncle Tom's Cabin was no literary masterpiece but it was a culture-bearing book. It came at a time when the entire culture was about to reject slavery. People seized upon it as a portrayal of their own new values and it became an overwhelming success.
The success of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance seems the result of this culture-bearing phenomenon. The involuntary shock treatment described here is against the law today. It is a violation of human liberty. The culture has changed.
“Contemporary culture is not very good on responsibility.”
Source: Think (1999), Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 105
Speech at Plymouth, Massachusetts (22 December 1820)
“Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture.”
"First Lady on Trial" The Sunday Times [London] (17 March 1996) (Online text in PDF format) http://www.martinamisweb.com/commentary_files/ma_takesavillage.pdf#search=%22%22now%20the%20twin%20addictions%20of%20the%20culture%22%22
Source: Journey Within (1947), Ch. 2 : The Three Revelations
Context: No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself. And the most objective books are the most deceptive. The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.