Lewis Binford on Why He Will Never Be a Quote of the Week

Paula Sabloff: You have a reputation as being rough around the edges in language.

Lewis Binford: If I’m trying to say something that I don’t think has been said, there’s no trite way of saying it. A cliché is usually pretty meaningless and also obvious to anyone who reads it. If you’re trying to say something with the same words that everybody else is using, but you think you don’t want them to think about it the same way, you have to play with the way you use words. If an editor or person reads my sentence, which I wrote in clear prose, and says, "Yeah, I know what you’re saying," then I know that he missed the point; and I take that sentence and make a whole paragraph out of it to make sure that he understands what is different about what I am saying. I write so that people have got to read and reread it so that maybe they have got the meaning.

PS: Why? Why didn’t you think the first time worked?

LB: Because they translated it into what they thought I was saying, not what I was saying. In a sense, the clearer writing is, the more ambiguous the terms are…. In other words, the clearest sentence would be the sentence that everybody would give meaning to immediately. But the degree [to which] they all do it the same way is not at all clear.

PS: You mean in scientific writing.

LB: That’s right. And if I’m trying to manipulate a reader, I can’t do it by making him think he knows what I’m saying. Because if I think I’m saying something that he doesn’t know; or I think I’m saying something new, then why should he think it’s all so clear and he’s thought it all along?

Paula Sabloff. 1998. Conversations with Lew Binford: Drafting the New Archaeology. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman