I burnt out on literary criticism during the late stages of my formal education. I was so frustrated with the pretentiousness and jargon that I actually stopped reading all criticism for many years—perhaps a dangerous move for a practicing critic. But Camille Paglia showed me that late-stage criticism could still be provocative, funny, engaged, and brutally honest. Here, too, I don’t agree with everything in this book, but that’s part of Paglia’s appeal. In a world of narrowing, self-referential discourses, she still has the capacity to ruffle feathers, and maybe even jab a blade into the delicate flesh beneath. I wish there were a hundred other academic practitioners of criticism who shared her audacity.