I was happily reading a mildly interesting article by Adam Gopnik about learning to draw the other day (it was published in the 27 June issue of the New Yorker). He had some reasonably interesting things to say about the process, and the paragraphs were flying by, when suddenly he came out with this:
"I'd hoped the drawing would be an experience of resistance and sudden yielding, like the first time you make love, where first it's strange and then it's great, and afterward always the same."
This abrupt change of gears to the extremely intimate threw me completely. When I decided to read the essay I never expected to be faced with Mr Gopnik - to whom I have never been introduced, or, indeed, even clapped eyes on - removing his underwear and encountering first 'resistance' and then 'sudden yielding'. The images these sentences introduced into my head were distracting and they added nothing to the main thrust, if I may use that word, of the essay's argument (such as it was). Perhaps others are less prudish in these matters. Maybe these details add to the appeal of the article for a majority of readers, but 'gratuitous' was the word that sprang to mind for me.
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