Re: A more relevant book comes to mind...
Aren't all successful fiction writers really propagandists themselves?
Sure, if you're a sophomoric thinker with no understanding of rhetoric.
Noting that fiction, or any other use of language, is inherently an attempt at persuasion is nothing new. The best known modern, sustained explorations of that thesis are probably the work of Toulmin and of various rhetoric scholars of the Constructivist school; but the basic idea goes back to antiquity.
Reducing it all to "propaganda", however, discards any useful distinction among applications of rhetoric and intentions of rhetors.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
