Use sparingly

Also reading The Night of the Gun, which is sort of like A Million Little Pieces, but with actual reporting. Guy writes for the NYT, so went back and interviewed people he harmed back in the (crack) day and the like...it's not bad. HOWEVER - he used the word acuity three times in the first twenty pages. Acuity is not like the - it needs to used sparingly. As in once in 300 pages.

This is like when I read John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead wherein, instead of mouth, he used the word maw four times. "...sticking a cigarette in the corner of his maw [paraphrase]." See, now, I should read his Whitehead's new book Sag Harbor about preppy black kids in the 80s but have this whole "maw" thing hanging over my head. Suppose he used maw again. Would I chuckle benignly, or would I, in the face of use of said obscure Whitehead favorite and in a tut-tutting sense of 'Well, the 80's weren't like that at all - no one really liked [Echo and the Bunnymen LP] Porcupine that much...' just give up on the book and stop cold? Best not to find out, at least until a copy shows up for a buck at Half-Price (them again!).

Maybe all writers have favored pet words they feel the need to trot out all the time. Some observant followers could even contend that this very outlet you read now relies overly much on too many unnecessary self-consciously Salingerian parentheses and "ironic" italicizations.

But that sort of acuity can only lead to a sock to the maw.