In a fragment of a book he intended to devote to The Origin of Truth, Merleau-Ponty wrote: “Communication in literature is not the simple appeal on the part of the writer to meanings which would be part of an a priori of the mind; rather, communication arouses these meanings in the mind through enticement and a kind of oblique action. The writer’s thought does not control his language from with- out; the writer is himself a kind of new idiom, constructing itself.” 31 “My own words take me by surprise and teach me what I think,” 32 he said elsewhere