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Preb wrote: And, as always, [Hemingway:]’s good at small details. Such as his dad’s exceptional eyes and fantastic sight. Another detail: In the ‘hemlock woods� where ‘long splintered pieces of wood hung like javelins in the tree that had been struck by lightning�. What a great image.

So much of this story is about those small intimate details. Any others that stick out for anyone, or anything you'd like to add about Hemingway's talent for details? Here's the place.

are those observations about his dad really a detail? or is it a son remembering things better than they were. its something nick's son tries to do with his dad in the end, but nick prevents that....but i know what you mean, from the hemingway perspective. within his short stories, there isn't room for anything extemporaneous. the detail is there for a reason.

i think in focusing on his dad's eye for detail that nick's lack of detail is punctuated. his lack of insight per se. he can't see the sheep...he can't see his hypocracy in having sex with trudy in front of her own brother while he'd kill there's for thinking the same of his own sister...he can't even see his own son until he speaks to him and breaks him from his revelry.

Gio wrote: "are those observations about his dad really a detail? or is it a son remembering things better than they were. its something nick's son tries to do with his dad in the end, but nick prevents that...."

I would argue that, even if they are improved remembrances, they are still details that of Nick's world that have become memories, and it is in expressing details, both tangible and ephemeral, that Hemingway's prose comes most alive, at least for me. And like you say, Gio, it is always there for a reason. This reminds me of one of the things that has always frustrated me about Hemingway's longer novels: there is much more superfluity, and the sparing exactness is lost in works like For Whom the Bell Tolls (which I do love nonetheless)

I am interested in what you're saying about Nick's lack of insight, which we also may have seen quite a bit of in Alpine Idyll. There are so many stories about Nick that once one's read them all we feel we know Nick, but maybe we know him because of the lack of Nick detail and the presence of the details that Nick perceives. I am going to keep that in mind when I reread Big Two Hearted River.

the way i see it is that his dad saw all the detail. he missed nothing. but for nick, he struggles to see the details and i always remember the saying that 'god is in the details'...of course, that can be applied to something beyond the christian sense of the word...but he doesn't see the forest for the trees

dear lord, i'm full of lines today!