The few times I have seen the talk show “Chelsea Lately,” a premonition of a world flattened by small talk and Kim Kardashian’s rear, my sense of its outspoken and attractive host, Chelsea Handler, has been that she is not so much giving quarter to her guests as holding them at bay with her intelligence.

It is obvious that Handler, who delights in calling her staff “idiots,” has a good head on her shoulders. “So, I’m steering this ship,” she will say with a gloomy laugh. She has produced four books in almost as many years. She calls them silly. Silly or not, they have sold in the millions.

Below the neck, Handler is arranged along old-fashioned lines. Writers have described her as a California surfer type, but the truth is closer to the fantasy. In person, without makeup, her body has the pre-silicone lushness of a ’60s Playmate.

That naturalness also invades her writing, which is apparently how many people discover Handler. A few days before our meeting for lunch, at Lure Fishbar in New York, I picked up her two later books at an airport kiosk; her first, “My Horizontal Life,” an account of her one-night stands that was published in 2005, was also available, but I decided I’d start with Handler vertical and work my way backward. I dropped the books on the counter.

“Oh, she’s so funny,” the female clerk said. On the plane, as the flight attendant was helping me put away my bag, she noticed the books on my seat.

“Oh, she’s so funny,” she said.

I had the feeling that if I held up one of Handler’s books, like Norma Rae, the entire plane would burst into applause, or flames. Very soon the reason for this elation became clear. Perhaps distracted by my snorts of laughter, the colossus in the next seat, a man with thick forearms and a Vandyke, looked up drowsily from his laptop.

“I’ve read her — she’s funny,” he said. “But she’s a little raunchy.”

At lunch, Handler listened to my story. I knew I was dead. Her confidence, her lack of any need to please or pretend she is interested in what you’re saying, is extraordinary to witness, like a steamroller crushing a trike.

“Yeah, that’s my least favorite word, raunchy,” she said, unfolding her napkin. Handler paused to give the waitress her order and then continued. “Men are more apt to use that word about women than women are. I think that’s why my audience is so female-heavy. They cheer you on, whereas men are, like, you’re not supposed to talk like that.”

She excused herself to go to the ladies room, and when she returned, she flung herself down in the booth in disgust. Apparently the previous visitor to the john had left some dribbles on the seat. She said: “When I go to a bathroom and see that I’m, like, really? You’re a woman — clean up after yourself.”