They were not exactly oafs or lugs, but brutes. Brutes with depths, brutes of sensitivity, brutes whose inner tenderness the brutes kept revealing, again and again, to an enraptured public. There is a special human thrill—perhaps a female thrill—in locating the tender heart of the brute. There’s a physics, an achievement, an Olympics to being gifted enough to appreciate what’s tender on the inside. But of course this dynamic doesn’t work without the brutishness.
