Because I have never read a writer who can put so much tension in a single sentence and call it "prose". While searching for his essays online, I found a passage in Mary Ward Brown's Fanning The Spark: A Memoir, which describes Michaels' sojourn at the University of Alabama.
All the exquisite writers who have walked along the Black Warrior... what would they recognize of our town if they returned? What unique history have been we preserved in the rush for Progress?
"I’d go mad with concern over semicolons. Conjunctions ruined my sleep. I wanted no needless sound in my sentences. I hated to use adverbs because of the “ly” endings. They seemed like sloopy trailers. They made the sense mushy and weak and artificial. I didn’t want to mean anything beyond what could inhere in the particular limited aural sensation. Idea and sound had to be exactly the same length, or the same density, as if a word could be flesh. That used to be my idea of real writing. Sculptural."
Personal rants aside, here is "The Lost Interview" from The Paris Review as well the relevant local history excerpt:
