Madam, - Hugh Linehan's review of Noam Chomsky's Failed States (Book Reviews, June 24th) fails to convince.
Rather than making an honest attempt to challenge Chomsky's arguments, Linehan launches a sustained attack on him, ultimately comparing him to George W. Bush. "Both men," he writes, "are exemplars of a debased political discourse in the US, where the most complex moral issues are reduced to black hats and white hats."
He also attacks Chomsky's "thousands of admirers": "As Chomsky's recent reception in this country demonstrates, the thesis laid out in Failed States will be greeted enthusiastically and acclaimed as the whole, unvarnished truth in many places outside the US."
The attack continues: "Chomsky's withering if rather heavy-handed sarcasm"; "the comparison [ with Iraq] is at best ill-considered, at worst infantile"; and "its complete absence [ context] here is breathtaking."
These charges are intended to signal disdain to the reader. It is a tactic used by the powerful when confronted with arguments they cannot answer: witness Bertie Ahern's reaction when challenged by Joe Higgins in the Dáil last week. He couldn't answer Joe Higgins's arguments so he resorted to attacking him, describing him as a "failed person".
It is a pity that Mr Linehan didn't pursue a point he concedes as "worthy of debate": that "we are served skewed narratives every day by a corporate media subservient to the interests of the powerful". That is the reason he finds some of Chomsky's work so objectionable: it challenges these skewed narratives which journalists must internalise and defend in order to build careers in the mainstream media. - Yours, etc,
MARK WALSHE, Edenmore Avenue, Dublin 5.
Madam, - Hugh Linehan rightly observes, in his review of Noam Chomsky's Failed States, that the author's use of quotation "may make the conscientious reader uneasy". He separately mentions the fawning blurbs on the dust jacket, including one that states: "Chomsky has an authority granted by brilliance".
It is particularly apt that Linehan should mention this quote. It comes from an article in the Sunday Times of October 16th, 2005 ("Wotsisname, the world's No 1 genius"). The full quotation (the article names the source as David Goodhart, editor of the current affairs journal Prospect) reads: "I think Chomsky has an authority granted by brilliance in one area". Goodhart is referring solely to Chomsky's ability as a linguist.
It is this insidiously pervasive looseness with source material, which Linehan identifies, that concerns many about Chomsky's writings. As Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor of the Observer (and himself sympathetic to Chomsky's causes) wrote in his own review of Failed States ("A noxious form of argument", June 18th): "By applying a Chomskian analysis to his own writing, you discover exactly the same subtle textual biases, evasions and elisions of meaning as used by those he calls 'the doctrinal managers' of the 'powerful elites'. The mighty Chomsky, the world's greatest public intellectual, is prone to playing fast and loose."
Although there is insufficient space in a single letter to construct detailed arguments demonstrating the full extent of Chomsky's impropriety, it has already been well documented for anyone caring to look, most recently in the previously mentioned Prospect article ("Against Chomsky", November 2005). The fact alone that so many of Chomsky's colleagues and peers object to his deeply flawed methodology deserves greater mention in Linehan's review. The trait of deceit, in a would be scholarly work, is a disgrace. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK COLLISON, Limerick.