I’ve been coming across tidbits recently that echo some half-formed thoughts in my own mind about the worth of long sentences, long books, complex thoughts:
E.B. White on Why Brevity is Not the Gold Standard in Style
The Writing Life: The Point of the Long and Winding Sentence (Pico Iyer)
It’s not that I’m against the concise and compressed. I’d just like to live in a world that appreciates the need for both the short and the long. And right now, I see compressed, concise, flash stories celebrated, often at the expense of longer forms. But I’m drawn to stories with lots of nuance and multiple voices and storylines, stories that challenge cultural assumptions and dominant theories. Perhaps they can be told concisely, but the ones I like best tend to use more words.
Short sentences and thin books are not an ideal. They’re a form that might work for some subjects or voices but not so well for others. As in most matters, I like to keep the door to a diversity of forms and content open.
