In James Wood's How Fiction Works there is a chapter called 'Detail'.
He mention's the puddle/condemned man bit from 'A Hanging'
'The avoidance of the puddle would be precisely the kind of superb
detail that Tolstoy, say, might flourish; War and Peace has an
execution scene very close in spirit to the Orwell essay and it may
well be that Orwell basically cribbed the detail from Tolstoy.'
I don't doubt he's on to something there, but what I find interesting
is that such a fastidious and good critic has that 'basically' in the
sentence; it's a bit Valley Girl/LA babble, don't you think?
