Thursday, August 4, 2016

A Withering Take Down In Harper's Magazine: Tom Wolfe Debunks Noam Chomsky's Much-Venerated But Scientifically Unproven Linguistics Theories

Wolfe's stylistic flourishes--the elipses, the capitalized words, etc.--haven't changed a whit since "Radical Chic" days--and maybe they should have, since by now they seem rather old-fashioned, a relic of the last century's "New Journalism."

Despite that, however, his lengthy essay, the centerpiece of this month's Harper's, is a brilliant ramble and the best thing I've read in a magazine all year.

By the end of the piece, not much remains of Chomsky's unscientific theories--or his reputation.

HarpersWeb-Cover-2016-08-302x410

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