In Notes of a
Native Son, which I've just finished reading, James Baldwin writes that
“the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.”
Only a writer could say something so outrageous as that about language. For a
writer it isn’t outrageous. But a normal person would say that the root
function of language has something to do with communicating with other people.
Baldwin has outed writers in a big way here: we aren’t really interested in
communication with other people and aren’t very good at it. We do want, along
with all the villains in James Bond novels and Superman movies, to control the
universe.
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