«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

Camille Paglia has written that gay men are much livelier company than lesbians, whom she associates with “resentment or ideology.” Do you agree that lesbians suffer from a paucity of wit?

Well, those who drank the Kool-Aid in the ’70s in the heyday of lesbian separatism — a lot of them have ended up in the academic world as historians or sociologists. And so there is a kind of earnest and stylistically impaired lesbian who is still in existence, like a stegosaurus.

Whom do you consider funny?

Ellen DeGeneres is pretty funny, as are Wanda Sykes, Lily Tomlin and Rachel Maddow. Gertrude Stein was hilariously funny. Claims about the dourness of lesbianism have been overstated.

What are the latest trends in academia? Is poststructuralist theory dead yet?

Well, it carries on in its zombielike, jargon-ridden way here and there. But it’s on the wane. The smartest literary scholars right now are interested in evolutionary psychology and brain science — how we may be hard-wired for fiction-making, aesthetic appreciation and the like.

New York Times
Jan 15 2009