No Strunk & White

What should you do when you encounter such sophisticated, elegant and unintelligible writing that you cannot understand an article, an essay or a book review? Feel inferior? Here's an example from today's book review. The protagonist's "painful need for connection is searing." Memoirs today seem to seek the painful, revelatory and searing. They revel in angst. So heck no, don't feel inferior to the author's special ability. Just realize that most gifted writers are leftists, progressives,  Democrats, socialists, Communists or worse. The gift of 'gab' on paper seems to work out that way. Exceptions to the rule exist, of course, but on the whole, the classics of literature that stand the test of time, are not esoteric and unreachable. What sells and persists might not be perfect Strunk & White writing, but what enriches certainly is understandable and moving. I'm into Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley. So far, so good.