The premise of Nolan's position is Claude's language tic should not rub off on him, vs it's ok for Tolstoy's to do so.

I disagree. I think words are powerful, and when a word will be understood exactly as it's stated, then the value of the word is present. So while he might bemoan "load-bearing" (so would many of it's readers), that word in the right place will exactly communicate what he'd like. That enough reason to "earn it's keep" in prose.