If you want style, look at Borges

 If I were going to give an example of style, it would be Borges’s story “The Dead Man.”

It’s the story of how Benjamín Otálora died. Otálora was an Argentinian who had to leave the country quickly. He worked for Azevedo Bandeira, a wealthy cattleman in Uruguay.

Otálora starts as a cowhand on one of his boss’s ranches. He gradually realizes his boss’s affairs are numerous and the most lucrative is smuggling. Otálora moves up the chain of command in the organization. He always wants more. He wants to command the organization. He wants Bandeira’s red-headed woman. He wants the friendship of Bandeira’s bodyguard and enforcer.

Otálora takes all these things. He realizes, just before he is executed, that Bandeira allowed him free rein, to see what he would do. He realizes that all of them — the enforcer who would kill him, the red-headed woman who loved him — had betrayed him, had said nothing to warn him as his ambition carried him to his doom.

Borges foreshadows the fall this way: Otálora finds the workers preparing for a visit from the boss. “He asks why, and is told there is an outsider among them, an outsider-turned-gaucho who is trying to take over. Otálora realizes that they are joking, but he is flattered that such a joke has become possible.”

That to me is style. It’s not the rhetoric. It’s the details that Borges chose to make this story.

The details give you, the reader, a perspective, a view as the story unfolds. Borges treats his readers as honored guests. They are given excellent seats. That courtesy to the reader is Borges's style.