The aim, in the plain style as in all styles, is to make something disordered and random feel measured and deliberate. Choosing the right words is difficult, and our first efforts always sound gauche and try-too-hard. “What is style?” asks Barthes in an essay on sport. “Style makes a difficult action into a graceful gesture, introduces a rhythm into fatality. Style is to be courageous without disorder, to give necessity the appearance of freedom.” Writing gives necessity the appearance of freedom when the words no longer look as if they are laboring to belong. For an adjective or adverb to
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