“In writing this, I notice the care it costs me not to use certain words more than I ought to. I am thinking about the word ‘just.’ I almost wish I could have written that the sun just shone and the tree just glistened, and the water just poured out of it and the girl just laughed – when it’s used that way it does indicate a stress on the word that follows it, and also a particular pitch of the voice. People talk that way when they want to call attention to a think existing in excess of itself, so to speak, a sort of purity or lavishness, at any rate something ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree. So it seems to me at the moment. There is something real signified by that word ‘just’ that proper language won’t acknowledge. It’s a little like the German ge-. I regret that I must deprive myself of it. It takes half the point out of telling the story.” – excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead“

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I’ve decided that I use the word “beautiful” much too often.

I’ve described many things as “beautiful”: photographs, people, designs, technology, art. However, after reading Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead“, I realized that I needed to curb my use of the word because what other word could aptly describe this book and do it justice? Not that my use of the word “beautiful” in the past was ever inappropriate but it’s a word I have over-used and by doing I think I’ve diluted it’s meaning and impact.

Continue reading Gilead.