The ‘Terrible Garrulousness’ of American Writing — Quote of the Day / Gore Vidal

American critics often complain that books are “too long” and “could have been cut” by a third or more. Why are so many books so bloated? Here’s answer from Gore Vidal, one of the great literary critics of our age:

“There is a terrible garrulousness in most American writing, a legacy no doubt of the Old Frontier. But where the inspired tall talesman of simpler days went on and on, never quite certain and never much caring what the next load of breath might contain, at his best he imparted with a new demotic flair the sense of life living. Unfortunately, since these first originals the main line of the American novel has reverted to incontinent heirs, to the gabblers, the maunderers, putters-in of everything. …

“For every Scott Fitzgerald concerned with the precise word and the selection of relevant incident, there are a hundred American writers, many well regarded, who appear to believe that one word is just as good as another, and that anything that pops into the head is worth putting down. It is an attitude unique to us and deriving, I would suspect, from a corrupted idea of democracy: if everyone and everything is of equal value, then any word is as good as any other to express a meaning. Or to put it another way, if everyone is equally valuable, then anything the writer (who is valuable) writes must be valuable, so why attempt another selection?”

Gore Vidal in Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays 1952-1972 (Random House, 1972).