Form emerges from the meeting of artist and content

Which do you prefer? Lurid, fruity prose, awash in imagery and sensuous textures and colors? Or straight-forward, clean, simple prose?

Form should emerge from the meeting of artist and content. I am not drawn to one or another kind of prose in the abstract. Most experienced writers' voices are distinctive, and likely they are drawn to particular kinds of stories and at particular times I find myself drawn to them. Perhaps to echo some feeling or rhythm I have brewing inside me but can't put the words to, or perhaps to counter it. But I wouldn't want Hemmingway to write Margaret Drabble's stories, nor would I want her to have written about Scout and Atticus, and to ask William Maxwell to write Shakespeare's plays would be ludicrous. Prose is an artform. It has a place for both decorative beauty and utility, obfuscation and clarity. Bring it on and keep it various.