Two weeks before I am due to meet Camille Paglia, she starts leaving a series of long and rather rambling messages on my answering machine. Most are self-promotional in nature; all are spoken at ferocious speed.
"I-addr essed-the-nanny-case-inSalon-magazine.com-and-you-should-check-the-rep lies . . . You-know-I-was-the-first-academic-to-use-the-Net?" But for the most part they are whimsical and helpful: "I-think-the-need-for-multicultural-reform-in-education-has-been-negle cted. Did-you-see-theFrontline-show-on-Diana-and-the-media?" However, what really strikes me as odd is the time they are left: 1.15 a.m., 2.30 a.m. and one, I swear, at 4.15 a.m.
All becomes clear the moment she fireballs her way into the Philadelphia restaurant, for here is a woman who never, ever sleeps. What energy! The entire restaurant immediately revs up: waiters stride faster, the light buzzes brighter.
As she sits down, or rather hovers like a human humming bird, another diner whizzes over in a wheelchair so fast he is forced to screech to a stop. "You're Professor Paglia, aren't you?" he cries, pumping her hand at double speed. She grins. "I think you're marvellous. Fabulous," he calls before accelerating away.
So this is she, America's most famous contemporary social philosopher. The anti-feminist feminist, the "propenis lesbian . . . I like the penis, I think it's interesting and I hate the way some women seem to find it risible." Harold Bloom declared her "the bravest and most original critic of our day", though to be fair, that's an unusually generous description. For, as Paglia would be the first to declare proudly, she is widely loathed and feared as the agent provocateur of academia.
Time does not dim her. It is seven years since she vaulted on to the international lecture circuit with her seminal work Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson. She infuriated critics who dismissed her as a one-book wonder by promptly following up with Sex, Art And American Culture and Vamps And Tramps, which skewered all things politically correct, including date rape and sexual harassment.
We met prior to her lecture at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall entitled The Modern Battle Of The Sexes, on the development of feminism in the 20th century and its legacy.
"I'm an equity feminist," she shouts above the restaurant clatter.
"I want equality for women in the eyes of the law, but I oppose special protections, they're reactionary. If women are up to the task, they should be adopted for combat. Notice that issue is never pushed by most feminists. Hah! They want more rights but not responsibilities for women."
A bowl of gazpacho appears and she picks up her spoon as if it were a club. We will come back to her own record of violence in a moment, but first she has a point to finish. "These feminists who want date rape grievance committees, they're trying to preserve a Victorian idea of the fragility of women. There are campuses in the Midwest where they say if a woman is drunk and she says yes to sex, it doesn't matter. But the man could be drunk and he's not excused. Yet the woman's regarded as some irrational, frail creature whose yes is meaningless.
"This galls me because I thought the 1960s were about getting institutions out of our personal lives. Back then, women were ballsy, feisty. We were fighting for freedom!"
She has not yet stopped to take breath and appears to inhale the soup without once interrupting her flow.
"I will hail Germaine Greer in my lecture," she rattles on. "At her peak, she was feminist perfection: stylish, witty, learned and sexy. Then, mid-seventies, something went wrong with feminism. It all turned and was anti-everything - humourless, anti-sex, anti-art and anti-men."
By contrast, Paglia, who is 50 and currently lives with a woman, is not anti-men. "Physically, I am very attracted to men, very, but I can't get along with them. Men always want to argue." She sighs crossly. What sort of men does she find attractive? Academics? "No!" Americans? "No!" She pauses for a rare hyper-second, then mutters: "Dutch men. They aren't intimidated. Nor are Australians."
I can see some men might find her overwhelming, scary even, but is she really as self-confident as she appears? "In matters of work, yes, in matters of love no! I have no ability to flirt, or to date, I am the worst! When I moved here to Philadelphia, I thought I must make an effort to meet people. So I tried to date women but it went nowhere! No one had any interest in trying to converse with me. Hah! Then a gay man would go by, there would be a spark and we could talk for three hours!"
Mmm, I murmur, what did this suggest to her? "I have a gay man's mind!" But it must be a drag having to change continents to get a date. "Genuinely masculine men aren't afraid of me," she protests. "The mechanics where I take my car adore me. But these castrated academics . . . huh!"
What's her opinion of British men then, Melvyn Bragg for example, prior to being interviewed by him on BBC Radio 4? "Very attractive! There's a certain dandyism in well-educated British men. The only men who have that here are black men. I thought Andrew Morton was terribly handsome when I met him, he seemed very relaxed with women. But here, I have too many words."
It's true that she produces thousands of them over lunch, many of them amusing and self-deprecating, and there is no subject on which she does not have a refreshingly un-shy opinion.
Gwyneth Paltrow? "An absolute pile of nothing, talentless! Oh, we live in a period of declining personality!" Demi Moore? "An automaton!" George Clooney? "Sexy, wolfish!" Brad Pitt? "Pretty but no pzazz. Who's going to play Moses, who's going to play Michelangelo?" she cries suddenly. "I worry about the kids today, the shrinking down of the cultural scene. There's too much irony now, everything's cool and people are afraid to be enthusiastic. In the 1960s, we were not afraid to make fools of ourselves. I'm always blundering! I'm always saying too much, knocking things over!"
Then there was the time at a Madonna concert when a drunken yob peed on her seat. "I smashed him, smack, right in the face. Then I heard: `Uh oh, some lady's hitting our friend.' So I told his gang: `Hey, he peed on our seats.' And they went: `Oh, OK, that's awful!' Frontier justice! Had there been women there, it would have been a huge cat-fight." Fired from her first teaching job, at Bennington College in Vermont, for fighting, Paglia relishes attacking men. She attacked another recently after he had the effrontery to sit down right in front of her at a dance show.
"I lambasted him, he must have been so bruised!" Yes, but why hit him? "I enjoy fighting, something deep in me. It's about territory." But why this anger, where does it come from? "Immigrant family?" She shrugs uncertainly. "I don't know, I felt excluded from WASP culture." She talks often about her childhood and I wonder if she regrets not having children.
"Never, I have no maternal instinct whatsoever. I am an Amazon! Whatever maternal instincts I have are with my students, but I'm more like a nun, I'm very strict. My history and my entire inspiration is a sense of feeling different. I think I had a severe gender dysfunction."
Does she mean she should have been born a man? "The point is, my entire life I was a ruffian. Even my significant other, Alison, says I have this way, if I'm drinking beer, as if I'm swilling from a medieval ale flagon. I feel like I'm a Viking."
Certainly she has a Viking's energy. Frantically working on Sexual Personae Volume Two, she dismisses the idea of moving on to an Ivy League college next. "Never! I'm not in the in-group and I won't conform." As she's about to explode again, another diner appears. "I'm Barbara, I play the violin in the Philadelphia orchestra and I'd like to say you're fantastic." She moves to disappear, then turns and says quickly: "Ms Paglia, forgive me, but you just say it like it is."