Lýsing fræðings

Rakst á skemmtilega lýsingu á manni í nýrri bók Bernhard Schlinks, Homecoming, og fannst eins og hann væri að lýsa bókmenntafræðingi (að frátöldum vísunum í Marx og Lenín, núorðið nefna menn frekar Derrida og Foucault eða Barthes og Baudry):

Then somebody I did not know took the floor. At first I listened with only half an ear, but in the end I was fascinated: he spoke without saying anything. The sentences followed one another logically enough, and each one had a beginning, middle and end; the Marx and Lenin quotations had a certain ring to them, and the references he made, the issues he brought up seemed substantive. But there was no thesis, no idea behind what he said: it was neither approving nor critical. He assiduously avoided any statement, any pronouncement he might later be called to task for, he might later have to recant. It was a brand of speech obeying it's own strict laws, which had, in this context at least, evolved into an new art form.