The Self as Center of Narrative Gravity?

According to the The New York Times, Daniel Dennett has a new book coming out entitled Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking.  Here are a couple of tidbits from the NYT piece:

The self? Simply a “center of narrative gravity,” a convenient fiction that allows us to integrate various neuronal data streams.

The elusive subjective conscious experience — the redness of red, the painfulness of pain — that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion.

This sure sounds like the sort of sophistry Dennett is known for.  Selves are fictions that allow us -- selves -- to integrate data streams.  I hope I will be forgiven for finding that unintelligible.

Now which is more likely to be true, that qualia are "sheer illusion" or that Dennett is a sophist?

You know my answer.  Here are a couple of anti-Dennett posts:

Searle, Dennett, and Zombies

Dennett's Dismissal of Dualism

Others, of equal trenchancy, are in the Dennett category.