Sali Bunny

English 113B

Professor Mary Marca

February 24, 2012

Explicit Detail 

            While reading some of the different essays in “Another City Writing from Los Angeles,” there were some stories that I felt had unnecessary detail. The two stories that caught my attention the most within this aspect were “Cactus” and “Maternity.” In the writing Cactus by Tara Ison, I really liked the story until the end when the writer was going into detail with the sex scene, it was disturbing. With “Maternity” by Amy Grestler the whole story had so much explicit detail because it was about her sister giving birth.

            When I was reading these stories I was very disturbed by the detail and I thought it ruined the whole story. I thought the detail was unnecessary and the writer in Cactus could have just said that she slept with her ex-boyfriend’s brother without telling us all the nasty stuff she included.  Ison uses detail throughout her whole story but I was disturbed only at the end because I am not use to reading stuff like that.

            In the story “Maternity” Grestler walks her readers through her sister’s birth. The story was good and I enjoyed reading it but I felt like she could have written it without making me want to vomit at some parts. While reading the story I was able to picture the whole scene of her niece’s birth, and that’s a scene I did not want to picture.

            After discussing it these stories with the class I realized that the detail was put there on purpose. The detail got me to keep reading even though I thought it was disgusting, I still wanted to read because I was intrigued on what is going to happen next. The writers did not put all that detail to disgust me, they put it so I could imagine what is going on. The scene I pictured while reading the last page of “Cactus” made me think that Tara did not have feelings for her ex-boyfriend’s brother but she was having sex with him because she missed him. Ison does not flat out say that in the story but with the detail she uses, I was able to pick it out. The detail used in these stories is not unnecessary; it actually makes the story a lot better and more understandable.