Thanks for the mention Marilyn, and thanks for writing such a helpful and well thought out article.

Further to your point about the music of language, this is from Nabokov’s Speak, Memory:

“…the scintillation of the sea, which is a milky blur in the snapshots we have preserved but was, in life, silvery blue with great patches of purple-blue farther out, caused by warm currents in collaboration with and corroboration of (hear the pebbles rolled by the withdrawing wave?) eloquent old poets and their smiling similes.”

This is the exact opposite of the tight writing Strunk and White would have us aspire to. But it’s gorgeous. And as arrogant as it is to draw the reader’s attention to your own cleverness like this…well, it’s Nabokov. Modesty in a genius only comes off as insincere.