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And the interesting thing is that I myself tend to be a maximalist, having grown up reading Thomas Browne, Thomas De Quincey, Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Lovell Beddoes. (And those are only the Ts.) My favorite living stylist -- until he died -- was one John Hawkes.
And yet I can see the virtues of adopting a minimalist style. Even in my case, the adjectives in my writing have grown less Latinate over the past few years.
In fact, we can grow too distracted by style, which is rhythm; by the groove, as the musician in me grew up calling it. We can be seduced into writing ourselves down the steps into basements that were supposed to be vestibules leading to doorways. We can find ourselves lost among curlicue locking pins and arabesque'd cupboards and trunks that close with the halves of silver fleur de lis.
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