FOR A WOMAN who made her name back in 1970 by calling for the liberation of women from their domestic shackles, The Boy seems the perfect closure point. Germaine Greer turns out to have lost none of the zest she had as a wild-haired young woman, one who, as she remembers here, had the interesting experience of watching Jim Morrison of The Doors giving himself a quick genital rub before exhibiting his well-stuffed crotch to the auhence. 'Correggio is the only artist ever to have depicted the anus and scrotum of an airborne angel: she remarks at one point, combining the eye of an art critic with the relishful appetite of a woman who isn't altogether ready to hang up her bow and arrow.

As a tasty scrapbook of male beauty (there are over two hundred plates), The Boy is made to lie open on coffee tables and be ogled. As a text, it combines erudition and a wonderful gift for making unexpected connections with a thesis which is out of tune with the