'I have no memory of being impressed or even detained much by the opening paragraph of Go Tell It on the Mountain. I just read it. I wonder if it was designed for that purpose: to be read without noticing the style. The sixty-one words in this opening paragraph include forty-two words with only one syllable:

"Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it was already too late."'

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/08/02/the-pitch-of-passion-james-baldwin/