As it happens, I was quoting a passage from The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin elseweb today ...
Here's the quote.
I make that four semicolons and two colons. Furthermore, the two colons are in the same sentence. If that's writing badly, may I write badly all my days, and do as badly from it as Le Guin.
I don't consider that passage quite the trump card. At all. A couple more dry paragraphs like that and this reader is gone.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the author herself would re-write the quoted text. Here's an excerpt from a Paris review interview (
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6253/the-art-of-fiction-no-221-ursula-k-le-guin):
INTERVIEWER
If there’s one clear development that I can detect in your work, it’s a shift toward economy.
LE GUIN
Well, I’ve had a very long career. What I’m aware of is that I’ve eased up on the formality of the prose. I like using a more colloquial voice to write in these days.
INTERVIEWER
Why do you think that is?
LE GUIN
In the sixties and seventies, the language of serious fantasy was still based largely on the styles of writers of earlier generations—Tolkien, of course, but also Dunsany, Eddison, MacDonald, clear back to Malory. As I began to depart from the heroic or adventure tradition of fantasy, I found a less formal vocabulary and a cadence better suited to what I had to say.
As for my writing voice in general, well, you get old and your language gets like your shoes or your kitchen gear—you don’t need fancy stuff any more. You’ve learned how to just say it. Rereading some of my earlier novels, I often think to myself, I didn’t need all that stuff—I didn’t have to say that much. I could cut that whole bit. Cut!
I want the story to have a rhythm that keeps moving forward. Because that’s the whole point of telling a story. You’re on a journey—you’re going from here to there. It’s got to move. Even if the rhythm is very complicated and subtle, that’s what’s going to carry the reader. This all sounds a little mystical, I suppose.
