... especially self-doubt, seems never to have troubled John Kenneth Galbraith. I think Glenn Reynolds is on the money when he says that "Galbraith, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, has benefitted excessively from having an excellent prose style."
JKG would have smiled at that "natural," Maxine. I loved this passage from the Economist obit:
"A devotee of Trollope and Evelyn Waugh—"Scoop" was a favourite—Mr Galbraith strove to perfect his prose, reworking each passage at least five times. “It was usually on about the fourth day that I put in that note of spontaneity for which I am known,” he once admitted."
More common among his generation than subsequent ones, I have noted in my years as an editor. (A natural fluency of style, I mean.)
ReplyDeleteJKG would have smiled at that "natural," Maxine. I loved this passage from the Economist obit:
ReplyDelete"A devotee of Trollope and Evelyn Waugh—"Scoop" was a favourite—Mr Galbraith strove to perfect his prose, reworking each passage at least five times. “It was usually on about the fourth day that I put in that note of spontaneity for which I am known,” he once admitted."