The critic, let's call him Joe, sat breathless. To physically define the feeling as a literary one the initial shock could be related best to understatement or euphemism. Both understatement and euphemism render the reader to feel blushing and happy at the sophisticated but quick movement from truth. Larkin's, 'Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home,/Strangeness made sense." Or the constant tug of every teen learning their first routine to kill the young adult, a fascinating rhythm of quick euphemisms costing only purity. These are the types of fast uplifting instances like the breathlessness at the end of the critic's experience, which trailed on, as we can see, for a little bit of time.
