naught

This is a sentence from <Tri-Stan: I sold sissee nar to ecko> by David F. Wallace

"For of course Codependae was doing to Agon M. Nar what Agon M. Nat's S-NN would do to the fluorescent BC market, viz. convincing him that those most bivalent of pharmaka, double-edged gifts so terribly precious & so heavy on the heart that a thousand sleepless weeping years couldn't even start to make good their price ... persuading A.M.N. & USA that the unearnable gifts of inspiration but the products of his own mortal genius, through recombination."


I don't get what "naught" mean in this context. I know the definition but I can't find the meaning in this sentence.

Naught means "nothing"; they were nothing other than the products of his own mortal genius, or to put it more simply "they were only the products ..."

In this context, 'naught' means 'nothing'. To make the sentence clearer, perhaps, you could think of it as reading ' . . . the unearnable gifts of inspiration were only the products of his own mortal genius, through recombination."




Cross-posted.

Thank you, both of all.Now I realized that I didn't know the definition.