Sunday, November 8, 2009

Noam Chomsky-the student

"At the discussion, which took place over the course of a few days at the Abbaye de Royaumont outside Paris, Lévi-Strauss sat patiently said nothing as others spoke their piece or pontificated, or pleaded and shouted their oppositions. But his doodles of cats and other real and fantastical animals were stunning, and those he left behind were the objects of a fierce competition among some of the conference’s participants, including myself. On the way to our last lunch, Noam Chomsky ─ who had dominated this conference of Nobel-prize winning biologists and world-famous mathematicians, philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists as I have never seen anyone do before or after ─ walked up to Lévi-Strauss and said in a shy sort of way: “Perhaps you remember me, when I sat in on your class at Harvard with Roman Jakobson?” Lévi-Strauss looked at Chomsky and said: “I’m sorry, but no.” Those were the only words he would utter in the conference room."

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