The Names of Rivers and the Names of Birds: Ezra Pound, Louis Agassiz, and the "Luminous Detail" in Hemingway's Early Fiction.

Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound shared a background in and an enthusiasm for the "Agassiz method" of scientific observation. Hemingway had been a member of the Agassiz Society from the age of four. Pound, for his part, referred to the "Modern" era more than once as "AFTER the era of 'Agassiz and the Fish.'" While Hemingway's apprenticeship to Louis Agassiz's naturalism and Pound's modernism have sometimes been understood to be at odds, this essay suggests instead their dual influence, and indeed their confluence, particularly in Hemingway's vision and revision of "Big Two-Hearted River." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]