She's great, in part, because, in conversation, she is maddeningly precise about all the things that one should aspire to be precise about. Like modernism. And culture and politics. And what it is to be a writer vs. an intellectual. She shows that most supposed intellectual writers (like that guy who wrote about intellectuals) are actually hand-waving cream puffs.
She is apparently contradictory and yet entirely consistent. She is relativistically concrete. Even if you don't agree with her, you've got to admire her rigor.