In the current London Review of Books is a very funny piece by Terry Castle in which she describes meeting Hillary Clinton – “Her Herness Herself! The Grinch Who Lost Her Emails! Our Straight-Talking-Thick-Ankled Lady of the Half-Explained! OMGoddess!” – at a swanky fundraiser in Palo Alto. The party was purest hell, of course: the baffling dress code, the exiguous canapes, the robots controlling the meet-and-greet line. But after hours of waiting, the sun came out. She and the H-Rod were finally photographed together, an occasion that not only set her baby boomer sapphic heart aflutter, but which also led her, more weirdly, to compare the Hillster’s “woolly beige fringe-fest” of an outfit to the felt suit that Joseph Beuys famously turned into a series of artworks.
Castle is a professor of humanities at Stanford and a bona fide “Jedi knight of literary exploration” (copyright: James Wolcott), and I am mad about her, for which reason I commend to you – any excuse, really – her book The Professor, which was published here in 2011 to the sound of almost no hands clapping (save for mine, which pumped together so hard my watch flew off). Absorbing, irreverent and a tiny bit wicked, it comprises six brilliant and hilarious essays. One involves her obsession with the first world war, another her love for the jazz musician Art Pepper; also included are a couple of travel pieces (akin to calling The Odyssey a travel piece), the best of which is about taking her mother to Santa Fe, a “trial of taste”, given her amusing and righteous allergy to Georgia O’Keeffe. Best of all, there’s Desperately Seeking Susan, in which Castle analyses her long semi-friendship with Susan Sontag (until disillusionment smacked her in the face, she was a somewhat craven groupie of the “dazzling she-eminence”).
Should this miniature summary fail to grab you, don’t be put off. Believe me: this book is about the most fun it’s possible to have while still maintaining the pretence – perhaps it’s not a pretence in your case – that one is an intellectual. Take it with you on holiday, whether you’re packing a polo neck or not. A hoot guaranteed.
