Splinters

I have been half-thinking about this answer (via wood s lot) of Noam Chomsky's when asked about Foucault:

"Foucault is an interesting case because I'm sure he honestly wants to undermine power but I think with his writings he reinforced it. The only way to understand Foucault is if you are a graduate student or you are attending a university and have been trained in this particular style of discourse. That's a way of guaranteeing - it might not be his purpose - but that's a way of guaranteeing that intellectuals will have power, prestige and influence."

Is there something in what he says?

Chomsky's demand for the simplistic side clarity is forgivable, given his acute sensitivity to the misuse to which language can be put. But there is the opposite tendency; to retain power through over-simplification. The pulp novelist Robert Harris is a prime representative of those who corral complexity into their sterilising, clich?-spined, journalistic prose.

"Storytelling, based on thorough factual research, is what interests Harris, and he sees his writing for what it is: a job with a long and honourable tradition. Imagine everyone trailing back to the camp after a day's work, wanting to be told a story, and the chap by the fireside says 'Actually, I'm not going to tell you a story tonight, guys, I'm going to concentrate on my prose'. He'd have been hit over the head with a club."

Who said literary fiction is about concentrating on prose? Isn't it like saying Rock music is better than Classical because it has fewer notes?

However, he reveals that he has experienced the mystery of literature, even if he refuses to face it: "Writing novels ? is a very strange way for a grown man to spend his life... it's only you in the room [and] it's only you running against yourself". Yes! And what does that tell you?

I have a club if anybody's willing ?.