Initial Response: Panopticism?

Wow, I've heard such good things about Foucault, I've read some of his other stuff that was recommended to me...his writing about how we shouldn't be obsessed with authors and their works should be static and unattached to the author's name...it was really intriguing. After analyzing his actual writing style and structure though, it's kind of annoying. He's really literal, there's no personal feeling in the writing whatsoever, just sort of a dry narrative, and it's so drawn out. I guess that's the really cool thing to do, use lots of obscure references, big words, crazy sentences that require a dictionary to get through, and slowly tie in a bunch of different points. It could have been summed up, I think, with a basic overview of the panopticon, the belief system that goes with it, and how that belief system is present in prisons, churches, schools, hospitals, quarantines, police systems and other crap. I mean that's all I really got from it that he was saying, plus 4,000 extra words.
At some points it kind of sounds like paranoia, the similarities are a bit too much of a stretch to really buy his point, also. I'm not really sure what else to say about it...it's wordy, a good point I thought originally...but now I kind of think he's just a tad bit silly and a lot of a talker. He's verbose, I guess, which sucks because he's so monotone...I can't imagine how boring the lectures he would give are.