Didion once wrote, “Style is character…”
Rhetorically, a “this is that” assertion that plops two abstractions around a copulative can be a facile expedient for simulating profundity.
Nathan Heller comments that Didion’s observation about style has to do with “the burden of creative choice.” Didion’s remark was made in an essay about Georgia O’Keeffe.
Every choice one made alone—every word chosen or rejected, every brush stroke laid or not laid down—betrayed one’s character,” Didion wrote.
What Heller quotes next from Didion’s essay cuts through the gauze:
“This is a woman who in 1939 could advise her admirers that they were missing her point, that their appreciation of her famous flowers was merely sentimental… She is simply hard, a straight shooter, a woman clean of received wisdom and open to what she sees…”
It takes a writer clean of fustian who fits her own description to describe O’Keeffe with those choices of word: hard, straight shooter, open. Character maybe, but style is style, too.
(Nathan Heller, “What We Get Wrong About Joan Didion,” The New Yorker, 2-1-21 issue)
(c) 2021 JMN
Harold Johnson Nichols, ca. 2005.
EthicalDative 
Away with Wayward Words!
In a dispute with the EU, AstraZeneca’s CEO insists their contract requires only “best reasonable efforts” to meet delivery schedules.
Lawyers disagreed over the language of the E.U. contract, which was only partly made public.
(Steven Erlanger and Matina Stevis-Gridneff, “E.U. Makes a Sudden and Embarrassing U-Turn on Vaccines,” NYTimes, 1-30-21)
Is the dispute over language about style or about grammar? Surely what the words actually say can’t be in contention?
Contracts, after all, are drafted with consummate clarity by highly literate lawyers. Then they are read and vetted exhaustively by all parties prior to the signing.
Of course my comments are crapulent with irony and contrariness to fact. Any agreement that includes phrases such as “best reasonable efforts” is designed (by lawyers) not to be load-bearing or fit for purpose.
For contrast, a doctor commenting on the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine says its promised reduction in severe disease is a powerful selling point.
“That’s what you want… You want to stay out of the hospital, and stay out of the morgue.”
(Denise Grady, “Which Covid Vaccine Should You Get? Experts Cite the Effect Against Severe Disease,” NYTimes, 1-29-21)
No mention of “best reasonable efforts.” Just consummate clarity: Stay out of the morgue.
(c) 2021 JMN